"2008" A New Beginning

Any time is a good time to make a new beginning. At any point in your experience, you can make a change, find a new direction, and take a new path. You do not need to wait for the beginning of a new year to begin to follow a new way of life.

However, it is sometimes easier to make a new beginning at this time of year, when the old year is drawing to a close, when the New Year stretches invitingly before you. There is a desire for newness in human hearts at this time. You cannot help but feel inspired and enthused by it; you cannot help being caught up in it.

Possibly you have an area in your life that you would like to change or improve. To someone else, your life may seem perfect and complete, but you know the places in your life and heart that call for light and exposure. The beginning of a new year provides a time and a season for newness, for the changes, inner and outer, that you have dreamed of making but have not yet dared to set into motion.

This is the time to gain a new understanding of the idea of life. This is the time to realize that God has a plan for your life, that your body should be the temple of the living God, where God’s healing power can transform you, that through His power you are made alive, restored, renewed, and healed.

Do you want peace in your life in the coming year?  Have you longed to be on better terms with family, friends, or co-workers, to feel closer to others, to be understanding of others, to be understood by them? This is the time to enter into newness, to open your heart and mind to the love of Jesus Christ and to let His love find expression in and through you in the thoughts you think, in the way you act, in your attitude toward people and situations.

You need not carry into the New Year the old habits of thinking and acting that have left you frustrated, unhappy, and or empty. You need not carry into the New Year the old doubts and fears and uncertainties, the old hurt and bitterness. You need not bring forward into the New Year, any feelings of un-forgiveness. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, you can let go of your old nature and negative ways of thinking and begin to live in the new life Jesus desires for you to have.

As we approach January 2008, this is the time for a new beginning. This is the time to let go of the old, to put on the new. This is the time to let the life and love and light of Jesus Christ flow through you and to shine in all that you do. Old thoughts and old conditions are as “waters that have passed away” (Job 11:16). Now you stand at a place of beginning again.

I hope these poems will bring encouragement to you in this New Year: