This is a New Year's Message????

We are so incredibly blessed. Really, I am not sure that we fully realize the mercy and hope we are provided through Jesus Christ. Do we understand just how much we are given with so very little required of us?

In the Old Testament, the Israelites tested God's patience at every turn. So, when they repeatedly disobeyed, they were scattered among their enemies. Still God gave them what He gives us, the opportunity to repent. We see in Leviticus 27:40-45 just what God had planned for their future. “But if they will confess their sins and the sins of their fathers—their treachery against Me and their hostility toward Me, which made Me hostile toward them so that I sent them into the land of their enemies—then when their uncircumcised hearts are humbled and they pay for their sin, I will remember My covenant with Jacob and My covenant with Isaac and My covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land…They will pay for their sins because they rejected My laws and abhorred My decrees. Yet in spite of this, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them or abhor them so as to destroy them completely, breaking My covenant with them. I am the Lord their God. But for their sake, I will remember the covenant with their ancestors whom I brought out of Egypt in the sight of the nations to be their God. I am the Lord.”

        I have pondered and prayed about this unique message. My first instinct when God placed it on my heart was to reject it. It seemed so doomsday-ish and this was supposed to be an uplifting message for the New Year. My intent is certainly not to march around Heartbeat the Magazine with a virtual “REPENT AND BE SAVED!” billboard sandwiching me. This message though, reaches to the very heart of who we are in Christ, of how much we choose to love our God! It is about intent and purpose. It tells us that, ”If My people, who are called by My Name, will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from Heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land,” 2 Chronicles 7:14. All He asks is that we repent and shed the past, enter into His circle of obedience and teach others to do the same. Our hope is always in God's mercy and love and that He will again forgive us which will draw us into deep meaningful relationship with Him, and…the frosting on the proverbial cake, heal our bruised and battered land!

God has shown me that if we enter another new year with sin trailing like weighted tendrils from our hearts, we will be scattered (think of that particular choice of the word scattered!), into the land of our enemies uncovered and unprotected: scattered, like so much chaff blowing about in a dusty barn, scattered, like we are not put together tightly, just bones hanging loosely to spiritually undernourished frames, scattered, without the super glue of LOVE that comes from humbled and authentic repentance before our merciful, loving and just God. Being scattered allows for no unity of purpose—it divides His children. How long will we choose to wander about Egypt alone and blind?

So it is imperative that when we fix our eyes on 2009, we first look toward the inward person, where sin habitates and devours and undermines the structure of faith. Sin also keeps us chained to our pasts with no hope for a future. Then, let's look outward in the direction that God is pointing us. He will never direct us incorrectly. And…it is all for our benefit.

Paul talks about our gain in his letter to the Philippians. “But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith,” (Philippians 3:79). Everything, every single thing has zero value if our relationship with our Father is tainted by sin. What better way to enter a brand spanking new year then to shed that which drags and pulls us away from what we were designed to be---God's repentant and obedient children!

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL!!!