Joshua 22:5 (NIV®)
“ But be very careful to keep the commandment and the law that Moses the servant of the Lord gave you: to love the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, to keep his commands, to hold fast to him and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul.”
We have come to the beginning of yet another year. Some of us have lost the person most dear to us. Some of us have had great success in our work. Some of us have achieved amazing goals. Some of us met the love of our lives. Some of us just did barely make it here. Life is full of so many opportunities to learn and grow. It is rarely perfect and easy. Sometimes it is just plain hard. The Lord is gracious to give us a mixture of just enough of everything we need, never more than we can bear, and here we are, wherever that is, wondering what is next.
A new year is the perfect time to evaluate and re-evaluate the things in life. Who we are and who we want to be, who we will spend our time with, what we will work toward, what our goals will be, etc. but in the end, it is really no different than any other day. We wake up and choose to set our eyes on Christ. We love Him. We seek His guidance. We spend time in His word. We try to listen at least as much as we talk. We determine to put our best effort toward obedience and seeking Him. We do all of that today. Then we do it again tomorrow.
We experience joy, pain, heartache, pleasure, excitement, exhaustion, you name it, but the one thing we know for sure is that this moment, day, week, month and year are all The Lord’s. We can choose to cooperate with Him, or not, but He who set the earth spinning in orbit deserves our attention, effort, and sometimes even our sacrifice. Let’s choose to love and follow Him. Let’s seek His face to know His plans and purposes for us today. Then let’s walk it out in obedience.
We may not see the larger picture until months or years down the road, but we’ll remember that at the beginning of this year we made a choice to put as much effort into our walk with Christ as we do our work, exercise, or play. I believe then we’ll be humbled and maybe even amazed at what God will do in us and through us to the praise of His glory.
What now? The same as it has always been. Set our eyes on Christ, walk in obedience, and experience the faithfulness of God. What a privilege and blessing!
God Bless You!