The First Day of the Rest of Your Life

  Every year it's common for people to make resolutions, goals for the coming year. This is something I've never done before. I guess I just never saw the point. If I do something then I do it. But if I want to do it, put it on my New Years' list and then don't do it, that can be super depressing to say the least. But then I was thinking, if I do make a list and am able to accomplish everything on it, I would actually know I did it! I've never been overly goal-oriented but I can't tell you how good I feel when I have a list of things that need done and can cross everything off that list. It's the beginning of the new year. 2015. Another year is behind us, and this year stretches before us full of opportunity, all kinds of possibilities. There’s no telling what will happen, what we’ll end up doing, where we’ll be. I saw a post from yesterday that said "Tomorrow is the first blank page of a 365 page book. Write a good one."  It's made me think a bit differently about this year. It’s true: my life is like a book… or a series of books and I am the author… or am I? To the world’s way of thinking, yes, I am. But should I be? I became a Christian when I was 8 years old. Since then I’ve had my struggles, the main one being trusting God enough to let go and just let Him work. Why? Why is it so hard to yield it all to Him? I never thought of it this way before but when I opened the door to Jesus Christ I was, in a sense, handing over the pen to Him. Giving up my place as author to the Author above all! The Author who wrote His story over all of history! He did that. He wrote the ultimate Story of life with a level of mastery that none of us could ever hope to even approach! The greatest authors of all time could never even dream of scratching the surface of His writing! Then why do we fear giving up the pen to Him? Are we afraid of what He might write? Why do we, when we give God the pen to write the rest of our lives, try to take it back from Him?  Is it perhaps because we don’t know what He has written? As every day passes I realize more and more how little Christians in this society actually know about God. How little I know about Him! And yet we, more than any other generation in all of history, have every opportunity to know Him! To know His works, His likes and dislikes, and how He wants us to live. The idea of God as an old softie in heaven who is tolerant of everyone and everything has become so ingrained in us that we forget that He is a righteous God before whom no sinner can stand. We forget that there is a price to pay for sin… a price that God Himself paid because He loved us! Sin cannot come before Him and yet He loved us, His creation that rebelled against Him, He loved us so much that He was willing to pay the ultimate price to enable us to live like Him. That’s right: Christ died to give us the ability to live life without sin. And yet when a Christian stands for what is right, for what God has spoken in His Word, we are told that we’re “over thinking things,” that we’re “judging” or “I wasn’t raised that way.” Really? Sometimes I just want to look at people and ask “Have you never read your Bible?” I’ve been so blessed to grow up in a family where Bible reading has been prioritized and yet I’ve become lax in my own study of God’s Word. So I’m taking on a personal challenge this year and I invite anyone who is reading this and wants to really KNOW God: this year I have a number of goals but if I had to choose only one it would be this: to read and study the Bible every day. We have the Scriptures, inspired by the Omnipotent, Awesome, Holy Creator of the entire Universe! The Bible is His Word, His Story! We in the United States have almost unbelievable access to it! There are people who would give anything to one page of the Bible while we sit here letting numerous copies gather dust on our shelves. So my challenge is this: take this year and read and study God’s Word every day. Read through the entire Bible this year. Several times, if you can, but at least once! And read it for life change. Read it expecting God to speak to you. Read it prayerfully. Pray for revival. Seek God. Turn to Him! Jesus’s first command recorded in the New Testament was “Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!” I would suggest that if it’s even possible this call is even truer now than it was then! Judging from the signs of the times I sincerely believe the second coming of our Messiah is approaching. Will He find us alert and watching? Ready for Him? Or will He find us asleep, lulled into the deadliest sleep imaginable? I’m praying for true, life-changing, society-challenging revival, starting with my own heart. Who will join me in this prayer? Are we willing to humble ourselves and pray and seek God’s face? Are we willing to turn from our wicked ways? That’s what repentance is: stopping short and turning our backs on our worldly ways of living. And there’s no middle ground. Either we serve Christ or we don’t. And if we don’t serve Him then who are we serving? There’s only one answer. We are in the middle of a war and yet as I look around I wonder, how many of us truly believe that? There is no neutral place. It’s either Christ or Satan. If we don’t serve the one then we serve the other. Either we love and obey Christ or we don’t. Simple as that. So please, join me in my prayer for revival. Join me in my quest to know the TRUTH about God and His holiness! We CAN know Him but it doesn’t just happen automatically when we say a prayer or are baptized. It doesn’t happen overnight. Christianity is a life-long journey, it’s a discipleship. We are called to be His disciples but it comes with a cost. To truly believe Jesus, to serve Him with our entire lives it will cost us… and we can’t afford it – not on our own. Only He can afford it and He enables us to be able to afford it. We can’t do it on our own. It’s true. But we have to be willing to give Him complete control. A Christian in name only is no Christian at all. Christianity isn’t a “get out of hell free” card. Christianity is a life dedicated to following Christ. To being His disciple: learning to life like He lives. The word "godly" isn’t just a word. It means “like God.” How can we be “like God” if we don’t know Him? If we don’t know what He’s like? That is what it means to be a Christian. We are called to perfection “Be ye therefore perfect even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” This doesn’t mean that if we sin it’s over. God extends His grace to cover our sins. But being born again means that we are new. We are free from the old man, our sin nature. We are free of that; we have the ability to overcome sin, whereas before we couldn’t. And yet here we are still feeling in bondage to sin… or not even feeling it: being so resigned to it that we don’t even notice or care. God cares. Trust me: He does. And He is calling us to abandon our old lives, to stand triumphant in Him! We are victors in Jesus Christ! And as victors we have the ability and responsibility to turn our backs on worldly wisdom and logic and follow our Lord, our Master. Follow Him no matter what. And let Him take up the pen and be the Author of our story.
  Today is the first page of a 365-page book. Give up the pen. Give the authorship to the Author of all, our heavenly Father! And see where He takes you!