All Things New: Hope for a New YearSample

God likes to make audacious promises. Things that sound ludicrous to our ears are delights to His.

In today’s passages, you’ll read about some of these promises. He starts with making rivers flow in the desert and only gets more outrageous from there. We’re talking things like the end of grief and sadness, the eradication of premature death, and (spoiler alert) some truly nonsensical behavior from both predator and prey.

Now here’s the million-dollar question: are you courageous enough to believe God’s promises? Are you willing to trust that God means it when He says, “Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear.”

“For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.” This is the nature of God, and it is a bold claim. Do you believe it?

Can you dare to believe it?

Can you go out on that limb and trust that any wrong thing you’ve done in the past is gone from God’s mind?

What are some things you have remorse about? Some of your actions in the past year you wish you could no longer remember? Take stock of those things. Write them down on a piece of paper and then dispose of it however you like. Crumple it up and throw it in the trash. Run it through the paper shredder at your office. Toss it in the fireplace and watch it be consumed into nothingness.

God doesn’t remember it. Why should you? Let’s pray.

Jesus, You are the great forgetter. I know it’s good to remember where I’ve done wrong because it helps me prevent acting that way in the future, but help me to have Your kind of holy memory, where all my actions are motivated by love for You and by the knowledge that You’re making me new! Amen.