Friday, December 31, 2010

2011 - The Year Of ...

Here we are once again at the end of one year and the beginning of another. With a New Year often come great expectations of things being better this next year than they were the last year. One thing I have seen is that sometimes Christians will say that this next year will be a year of ______ (fill in the blank) and most of the time whatever they say rhymes with the year coming up. But there is one thing I have noticed about all of this that usually spells disappointment and unfulfilled dreams for people as they go through the next year.

The majority of the time when people look ahead to a New Year, and especially when people "name" the year as the year of blessings or abundance or something like that, they focus on something outside of themselves. Many times when Christians talk about what they are looking for in the New Year there is a big focus on what God will do but normally there is almost no focus on what they can or should do. Now I am not against declaring that 2011 will be some great year of whatever but my question would be, how is that going to happen?

If we want 2011 to be the year of blessings and abundance or whatever then a lot of that happening is going to depend on us. We just got done celebrating Christmas where we traditionally mark the birth of Jesus but we forget that He did not just stay a baby, Jesus came to fulfill the requirements of the Old Covenant and to bring us into a New Covenant with God. God's part in our being blessed or having abundance is pretty much taken care of. Now it is our turn to do what we need to do to live in the reality of what Jesus did for us.

My desire is for each and every person to have 2011 be far superior to 2010, but again so much of that is up to us. If we really want things to be different next year then maybe we should declare that 2011 will be the year of growing up spiritually, or walking in love, or renewing our mind with the Word of God, or giving more than ever before, or being a doer of the Word and not just a hearer, or volunteering in church more often, or studying the Bible more than ever before. If we do those kinds of things then the blessings and abundance we are so often looking for will be ours. May 2011 be a year of blessings and abundance for all of us as we live our lives according to God's Word.