A New You for a New Year

Are you sick and tired of being sick and tired? Have you reached the end of your rope only to find out that it’s much shorter than you imagined? Was last year as good as you hoped it would be? Was it as bad as you feared it would be? Does the uncertainty of the future leave you anxious? Has your own mortality entered like a crack in the ice in your youthful belief in personal indestructability? But wait there’s more… Does the randomness of good happening to bad people and bad happening to good people leave you wondering if there’s any rhyme or reason to reality? Is looking for answers to these and many other questions like looking for needles in haystacks? Is the quest to find meaning in life like trying to nail fog to the wall?

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If you’ve rejected Christ because of Christians don’t mistake the messengers for the message. Christ told his followers to lake His light to the world and most have spent the last 2018 years trying to build a lamp and pretending it was the light. The message is as simple as receiving it: Confess Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead and you will be saved. That’s it. It’s not about joining the right club or following the right rules. We don’t need a seminary degree or someone with one to walk us through learning the secret handshake or the Abra Kadabra password. And there is no magic decoder ring. We don’t have to read the Bible from cover to cover. We don’t have to wear the right clothes, beard, or haircut. We don’t have to vote for the right candidates. We don’t have to take an oath to believe the same things that everyone else who confesses Christ as Lord does. It isn’t about being good enough. That’s one of the great miracles of God’s economy. While we were yet sinners Jesus came and died so that we could live. It isn’t about becoming a religious robot who says the right things at the right time to the right people in the right place. God is the One who created us with free choice, so we’re free to choose. It isn’t about conformity. God is the One who created us to be an individual and He doesn’t make junk. We are who He created us to be. He has placed us in a certain time and place so that we can become all He designed us to be and do all that He has called us to do. And that means what He created, placed, and called you to be will be different than what He created, placed, and called me to be. You see it isn’t about cookie-cutter, repeat a formula, and follow the rule book club membership.

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It’s about each of us individually confessing Jesus as Lord and each of us individually believing God raised Jesus from the dead and then learning to commune with God, to hear Him speak to us as individuals and then doing what He tells us to do. If the questions at the beginning of this article float through our minds like storm clouds in a cloudless sky obscuring what should be clear. Let’s give up the battle to do it on our own. Let’s surrender and find victory in allowing God to count the victory of Jesus over sin and death to our account. It’s so easy we can do it right here right now. We don’t need to be in a meeting, at an altar, or in a special building. We don’t need anyone to hold our hand or even know what we’ve done. We will know. God will know. And once we’re in his hand no one can snatch us out. I confess Jesus as Lord and I believe in my heart that God raised Him from the Dead. That’s it. All done. The battle is over. The war between us and God is over and we are one with Him. Welcome to a new you for a new year.

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