The New Year has been upon us for a couple of months so how are your resolutions going? Many people like to start out the year fresh and leave behind the past as they seek to be a new person in a variety of ways. The term “New Year, New You” has been used over and over, yet sometimes by three or four months after the first of January, our resolutions have lost speed and have tuckered out.
I began looking into God’s Word to find out what’s new. You may think, “That’s an old book! There is nothing new in there!” The following are promises in God’s Word that guarantee newness of life and they have never grown old, especially to those who have received them.
In Lamentations 3:22-24, the Lord tells us about the NEW MERCIES that He gives us every morning and His compassions fail not. Mercy is when we deserve judgement but it’s withheld due to the compassion of the judge.
We deserve judgment from God Almighty because we have failed to keep His commands but because of God’s great kindness, because of His mercies, we are not consumed at this moment. God’s holiness demands eternal death for one sin, yet His love provides eternal forgiveness for all sins through the work of Jesus Christ at the cross. The payment for sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life. (Romans 6:23)
God’s Word speaks of the NEW BIRTH in First Peter 1:3: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In His great mercy He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”
God is willing to bring us into His family and give us His Spirit because of Christ’s death and resurrection. We were all born into our mother and father’s family but God says we need to be born into His family. It’s a spiritual birth and it can only happen by putting our faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. The Lord Jesus said that a person must be born again; they cannot see God’s Kingdom if they are not (John 3:3).
When the new birth happens, then a person becomes a NEW CREATION, with new desires to please God and new power to do it! (Second Corinthians 5:17; Galatians 2:20). New Year’s resolutions become successful when attempted in God’s strength.
When a person is born again, God’s Spirit comes to live within and the believer is sealed by His Spirit, never to be lost (Ephesians 1:3). The new believer will begin to live a life that is victorious over sin because of God’s new life that lives within the individual by the power of His Holy Spirit. As a person keeps their eyes on the Lord, through faith and obedience to His Word, He will continue to work and bring glory to Himself through a life that is lived for God (Second Corinthians 3:18).
A NEW AND LIVING HOPE now belongs to the child of God. They are never alone and they have God’s guidance and strength by His Spirit to live a new life which lasts 24/7 with God, all the way to Heaven!
“Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:13). There are times daily when I may fail my Father in Heaven, but my eternal life isn’t dependent on my success as a Christian but is fully resting on Christ’s death and resurrection for me (John 10:28)!
A new hope produces a NEW SONG. The depressing, empty songs of the world will no longer reign in one’s heart, but rather the believer will “Sing a new song to the LORD, for He has done wonderful deeds. His right hand has won a mighty victory; His holy arm has shown His saving power (Psalm 98:1)!
May you come to know the newness of life that God in Heaven wants you to have (John 5:24).
Becky Kew shares Good News as she does youth ministry at Sandy Bay First Nation, Manitoba, Canada. Beckykew@outlook.com
