Happy New Year! This is the first of 366 days we have in this leap-year to enjoy life and do good. Will we allow today to be one more day of the “same old same old” or will today be a day we choose to enjoy the love of God and live in response to that love?
We can enter into this new year with joy and hope because it is God who says that when we invite Him into our lives, we become new. The old goes and the new comes. God does it. Prior to God living in us we are dead people walking around not knowing how to do life. When God makes us alive, He not only shows us how to live but gives us the desire and the power to do things His way.
God has chosen you and made you his holy people. He loves you. So your new life should be like this: Show mercy to others. Be kind, humble, gentle, and patient. Don’t be angry with each other but forgive each other. If you feel someone has wronged you, forgive them. Forgive others because the Lord forgave you. Together with these things, the most important part of your new life is to love each other. Love is what holds everything together in perfect unity. (Colossians 3:12-14 ERV)
Can we really hope to live like that today and over the course of the following 365 days? Our hope should be based, not in our own self-effort to get it right, but rather in the God who chooses us and works powerfully in us to make us His holy people.
This is what we are affirming when we speak in Step Two about coming to believe that a power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity. This is the humility of Step Seven when we humbly ask God to remove all our shortcomings. This is the joy of Step Twelve as we realize that we have had a spiritual awakening and are not only sharing the good news but are practicing it in all our affairs.
Prayer: Loving God, thank You for not only inviting me to new life but for coming to be that life in me today and each day of this new year. You are the hope that lives inside me and the love that is always there to take me forward. I pray that You will help me to live in this new year, one day at a time, as the person You created me to be. Help me to become more like You every day. Amen
©2020 Partners in Hope
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