A new year brings new opportunities. We are thankful that we have a future in Christ and we are grateful for His blessings over the past year.
We see a new year as an opportunity to dream big dreams, set goals and see it as a fresh start. You might have goals for the new year, such as fitness, travel, finance or Scripture reading. Every day with Jesus is a new opportunity and the Bible tells us that in Christ, the old is gone and the new is coming.
When we become Christians, this is what happens. We get a new beginning with Jesus at the moment we are born again, but we sin each day and His mercies are new each morning.
So this week, be praying to God and ask yourself what God is calling you to this year and what you need to leave behind in 2021.
18“But forget all that—
it is nothing compared to what I am going to do.
19For I am about to do something new.
See, I have already begun! Do you not see it?
I will make a pathway through the wilderness.
I will create rivers in the dry wasteland.
(Isaiah 43:18-19)
God is always doing a new thing in our lives. It’s His job to be doing a new thing, and it’s our job to perceive it.
There’s something novel about something new. The same thing every day is boring. We don’t say Happy Same Year from 2nd January-31st December because we don’t need to talk about it. But with new things, we need to make a big deal, we need to over communicate, we need to let people in more. New things take more time and new things bring about change.
Sometimes we can be resistant to change, but people generally like new things. A new pen is easier to write with, new trainers make us run faster and a new bin bag always makes the kitchen smell fresher.
If we have certain things set up nicely for us, we don’t like change. We might have a forever home, and our marriage is something that definitely shouldn’t be changed. We go into marriage for life!
New things require change. Everyone likes new cars and new haircuts, but people only want change when it makes their life better.
Change for the sake of change is bad, however. We would say stay rooted in the blessings of God, but let’s not cling onto anything God is calling us to change.
High-level changes we need to make.
1) Change our perception
Change the way we are seeing the situation in front of us
2) Change our perspective
Change angle/lighting/timing (attitude)
3) Change our surroundings
Might need to move on to something new in life if God is calling that way.
In the Isaiah passage, some translations say “do you not perceive”. Perceive means “become aware of” or “become conscious of” things. We need to be aware that God is always doing a new thing.
There is so much potential ministry fruit around us. We need to change our perception.
We need to be praying to God to open our eyes to the things unseen. God is at work all the time, His presence is before us and behind us all the time. Spiritual opportunities are opening up all the time, and we need to pray that we can perceive it.
God is already doing a new thing, we just need to perceive it.
Once we perceive what God is doing, we then need to change our perspective about what’s in front of us.
We all have different perspectives. We are all different, and that’s a good thing. We should never forget that we’re created differently and we have different economic backgrounds and academic abilities. We all react to things differently and learn things differently. We should learn to love that.
If we change our own perspective, we can have more empathy, be more efficient as leaders and be more loving to communities around us by changing perspective.
Changing perspective is different to changing perception.
Perception is when we start to see what God is doing in our situation. Perspective is changing the way we look at our situation. It’s looking at things from different angles, looking at things for different lengths of time, and maybe a change in attitude too.
Maybe we change our perception and our perspective and things still aren’t right. Maybe we are called to change our surroundings. For example, we might have to get out of a toxic relationship, maybe we need to break bad spending habits and addictions.
The truth is, having a new life with Jesus is so worth giving up sins and changing our surroundings.
This year, Light and Life is setting up as its own society. Some things will change and some things will stay the same.
Perception. We have always sought God’s will to bring light and life to a dark and dying world. We will change our perception on how we can better serve the local community.
Perspective. We have great leaders in this church and we aren;t changing them. We will change teams and utilise leaders differently though.
Surroundings. We are clear on who we are called to be here at Light & Life and who God has called us to surround ourselves with. We will change who we surround others with, setting up a new missions budget, seeking out new needs in the community. There’s an urgency with the Gospel message and we want to seek out how we can spread this better, faster and reach more people.
So be praying what Jesus is calling you to in 2022.
Happy New Year!