New Year, New Promises?
The New Year and the first Family Table Devotion of the year! I’m sure you have heard all the promises the New Year has to offer: a clean starting point, fresh ideas, 365 blank pages to write a better story. The old is gone and forgotten, the new is here and only needs to be built upon. Yet, here we sit…
The New Year is all about resolutions. Do I have the excitement and anticipation promised by the New Year to help us both to make and keep new resolutions?
When I look forward to new promises, and must look backward to the old promises that I trust. St Paul wrote to the Corinthians:
I am going to call your attention to the gospel that I preached to you. You received it, and you took your stand on it. You are also being saved by that gospel that was expressed in the words I preached to you, if you keep your hold on it—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received:
that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures,
that he was buried,
that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures,
and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve.
After that he appeared to over five hundred brothers at the same time, most of whom are still alive, but some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, and then to all the apostles. Last of all, he appeared also to me, the stillborn child, so to speak. For I am the least of the apostles, and I am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted God’s church. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not ineffective. On the contrary, I worked more than all of them (and yet it wasn’t my doing, but it was the grace of God, which was with me, that did it). So whether it is I or they, that is what we preach, and that is what you believed.
From <https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Corinthians%2015&version=EHV>
If the New Year is not promising you Christ dying for your sins and rising on the third day and the promise of his return in glory, then find the place where those promises are given to you. Those are the promises to trust.
If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. The new has come!
From <https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20Corinthians%205&version=EHV>
Jeremiah tells the promises of the New Year are every day with Jesus:
But in my mind I keep returning to something,
something that gives me hope —
that the grace of Adonai is not exhausted,
that his compassion has not ended.
[On the contrary,] they are new every morning!
How great your faithfulness!
“Adonai is all I have,” I say;
“therefore I will put my hope in him.
From <https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Lamentations+3&version=CJB>
Happy Year,
[The valediction is correct! Solomon tells us there is nothing new under the sun!]
Trust the Promises
Steve Skiver