Another Year to Love Him

By Maria Fontaine DECEMBER 28, 2015

“Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.”—Ephesians 3:20 (1)

The end of one year and the beginning of the next is a good time to look back on the accomplishments and victories, as well as the mistakes of the old year, and to look forward with determination to do our best to make the new year an even better and more fruitful one!

As you commit the new year to Him, He can help you to consolidate last year’s gains, as you continue to acknowledge Him in all your ways and ask Him to guide your steps.2 He promises to direct your path, because you have placed your faith in Him. He is going to guide you and open the doors He has prepared just for you, as you commit your future and hopes to Him and trust in Him with all your heart.3

Every year can be a year of growth in the Spirit, growth in outreach, and growth in drawing closer to Jesus, if we commit it all into His safekeeping. His Word encourages you to weather any storms you may be facing, to hang on to hope no matter how big the waves may seem, or how powerful or how swift. If you’ll hang on to Him, He’ll hold you up and prosper you, and take you safely to the destination that He has planned for you. Remember, “The future is as bright as the promises of God!” and all you have to do to please the Lord is to do your best.

We all need to have a vision of what the Lord wants for us, something that will motivate us to keep going even when the going gets tough. Besides the direction the Lord has given you personally through His still‚ small voice speaking to your heart, He also speaks to each of us through His printed Word. Just think: He has given us His “exceeding great and precious promises,” through which we can actually partake of His divine nature!4

If you’re struggling about anything in your life, remember that it’s well worth it to hold on and to keep fighting the good fight of faith. If you keep the faith and hold tight to His promises to you, even at those times when it may seem as if all is lost, you will eventually see the fulfillment of the blessings that He has promised. He loves you, and will work every single challenge and difficulty to your good in some way, in this life or the next.

Think daily on all the gifts of love that He gives you, because He loves you—just you! He loved you enough to give His life for you. He still loves you enough to give His life for you. We just have to receive His gifts—His life, hope, joy‚ fulfillment, love, compassion, anointing, strength‚ help, and all His gifts and blessings, and His wonderful‚ life-giving words. Priceless treasures above all that we can ask or think!

He daily loads us with His abundant blessings so that we have so much we can’t contain it all! We should be motivated to do all we can to share God’s love and truth with others so they can also partake of His never-ending riches in glory. And the more we share it, the more He’ll pour it on. The more we praise Him for what He has already given us, the more room we make to receive His wonderful gifts.

God Knows

And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:
“Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”

And he replied:

“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God.
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.”6

1 ESV.
2 The Jesus I Never Knew (Zondervan, 1998).
3 Matthew 11:28–30.
4 Matthew 21:5.
5 Originally published June 1975.
6 "The Gate of the Year" (poem by Minnie Louise Haskins.)




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