Happy New Year
- Jan 3, 2025
- 6 min read
Alice and I want to extend our love and prayers to you. We pray that the Lord will bless the start of the year with a renewed heart and focus and trusting Him for all that lies ahead.
We wish you a happy and blessed New Year.
We’re embarking on a new series from this story in Matthew 14.
In our text we notice that the disciples made a choice and were being obedient to Jesus: “Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side" (v22 ).
Jesus and His disciples had spent the day with thousands of people. Jesus taught them and then He miraculously fed them with fish and bread. Jesus then invites or encourages His disciples to get into a boat and has them set sail for the other side without Him. What a choice!
Some choices we make have little or no consequence on our lives; others can be life-changing. What does matter is that you choose to live by faith in Him who loves us and gave us His life!
What’s God calling you to do? What’s stopping you from accepting His invitation and stepping out in faith in obedience at the start of 2025?
One of the defining realities of the 21st century is that we have an amazing amount of choice.
Just take a moment to think about how many different decisions you made just to get where you are today. What time to get up? Shower or bath? What to wear? What to eat? Which one - car, bike or walk? Each day we are confronted with choices.
We have a choice at the start of this New Year. What will you do with Jesus?
How will you respond to Him as Lord? What are you prepared to release in your life?
Are you prepared to hand over all your life to Him and to walk with Him and obey Him, whatever the call? Are you prepared to be separated from the crowd and trust Jesus with His call on your life?
Following the miracle of Jesus feeding the multitudes, the crowd was going to take Jesus by force and make Him king (see John 6:15). Probably, the disciples were also taken by these events and Jesus needed to separate them physically and emotionally from the crowd’s mentality and possible action.
How easy it would have been to seize the moment. But it would have been the wrong choice. There was so much more they had to learn.
You can’t miss that God wants and longs for so much more to happen in you!
Brennan Manning writes, “Until the love of God that knows no boundary, limit, or breaking point is internalised through personal decision; until the furious longing of God seizes the imagination; until the heart is conjoined to the mind through sheer grace, nothing happens.”
Can I just say conjoined means ‘joined together, united, or linked overlapping and facing in the same direction’ (Collins)
What does it mean for your heart to be conjoined to the mind through grace today? Or, maybe it’s just
“Lord, there is so much me, not enough of you!”
What about choosing to trust Christ? It’s not about a rash decision you might regret later. It’s about intention. I choose to follow Him.
But you must count the cost.
A London newspaper carried an advert that read:"Men wanted for hazardous journey: small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, and constant danger. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success." The advert was signed by explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton and brought inquiries from thousands of men.
Commenting on this, Warren W. Wiersbe said, "If Jesus Christ had advertised for workers, the announcement might have read something like this: 'Men and women wanted for difficult task of helping to build my church. You will often be misunderstood, even by those working with you. You will face constant attack from an invisible enemy. You may not see the results of your labour, and your full reward will not come till after all your work is completed. It may cost you your home, your ambitions, even your life."
There is no doubt the choices we make today shape our tomorrows.
I’m asking you to stop and think today at the start of this New Year of the real choice for LIFE. Nothing can be more important than knowing, obeying and living for Jesus - entering a new chapter where change can take place, and a new reality of all that Jesus is, that can be experienced.
I wonder how many of us are still living on the back of an 'if only' moment – or still in a 'if only' moment - even at the start of this New Year.
If only we had more friends, if only God had answered that prayer, if only that hadn’t happened, if only I’d got that job, if only we had more time, a better house, more money. If only she had decided… if only he had said… if only I hadn’t said … if only, if only, if only.
The trouble with so many 'if onlys' is they can keep us facing the wrong way—backward instead of forward. It wastes time and becomes an excuse for not trying anymore!
Remember what Paul said in Philippians 3:13: "But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead."
"This one thing I do." Most of us are pulled and tugged in a thousand different directions. Well, there is only one thing that will matter when this life is over, and that is how well we lived this life for the Lord. By the way, the word 'forgetting' means,"cease to be affected by." Ceasing to be affected by other things, will we choose to trust and follow Jesus today?
Os Guinness states, “Calling is the truth that God calls us to himself so decisively that everything we are, everything we do, and everything we have is invested with a special devotion, dynamism, and direction lived out as a response to his summons and service.”
Stop for a moment!
What is Jesus asking you to do at the start of this New Year? Where is He calling you to go? What have you kept putting off because there seems to be more important choices to make, or are you simply following crowds?
What would it mean for us to say yes to God’s plan for our life and walk by faith? What choices will have to be made to do what the Lord has asked to comply with His will.
But note, knowing the will of God is one thing, doing it is another matter. Take the disciples in our story, the biggest thing God is doing in your life is teaching you to trust Him, no matter where it may lead.
Tim Keller said: "Faith is transferring your trust from your own efforts to the efforts of Christ. You were relying on other things to make you acceptable, but now you consciously begin relying on what Jesus did for your acceptance with God. All you need is nothing”.
God is a loving God; He longs to give you His life and love in all its fulness.
The most important choice you will make in your life is whether or not you choose to follow Jesus and give your life to Him. All the other important decisions in life hinge on that choice.
Dallas Willard says, “The greatest issue facing the world today with all its heartbreaking needs is whether those who are identified as Christians will become disciples, students, apprentices, practitioners of Jesus Christ, steadily learning from him how to live the life of the kingdom of the Heavens into every corner of human existence. That’s it. Jesus is not looking for converts to Christianity. He is looking for apprentices to the Kingdom of God.”
What’s your choice today?
Are you ready at Jesus’ bidding to set sail to the ‘other side,’ even if storms get in the way?
Prayer
'Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will, all I have and call my own. You have given all to me, to you Lord, I return it. Everything is yours; do with it what you will. Give me only your love and your grace, that is enough for me.'
St. Ignatius of Loyola
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