Someone has rightly observed, “Life is a series of new beginnings.” Thankfully for the believer, our God is the God of new beginnings! The Creator who alone could make something out of nothing, can also make something beautiful out of our messes.
Every time a sinner comes to Christ, He makes a “new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Someday He has promised to “make all things new” (Revelation 21:5). Between our new birth and our arrival in the new heaven, the new earth, and the new Jerusalem, God is faithful to help us find new beginnings.
The start of a new year is a good time to push the spiritual reset button and find a new beginning in your walk with Christ. I am excited to begin a new year of podcasts with a series through the opening chapters of Scripture. Genesis 1-11 has been called a seedbed of doctrine, because they introduce every major doctrine in the Bible in seed form.
Read Genesis 1-11 and make note of all of the first mentions. The foundational truth of Genesis is more needed than ever as we approach the events found in the Revelation! Would you join me in this study? Begin your year at the beginning of the Bible and you will find a new beginning with God.
You may listen each day on our newly designed website, enjoyingthejourney.org. The daily podcast is also available on your favorite podcast platform or on our Youtube channel. However you listen, I pray God will use the first series of a new year to enable you to start 2024 strong with the Lord.
As a boy I was required to memorize a poem by Susan Coolidge. Its words have come back to me again and again through the years…
Every day is a fresh beginning,
Every morn is the world made new;
You who are weary of sorrow and sinning,
Here is a beautiful hope for you-
A hope for me and a hope for you.
All the past things are past and over,
The tasks are done and the tears are shed;
Yesterday’s errors let yesterday cover;
Yesterday’s wounds, which smarted and bled,
Are healed with the healing which night has shed.
Yesterday now is a part of forever,
Bound up in a sheaf, which God holds tight;
With glad days and sad days and bad days which never
Shall visit us more with their bloom and their blight,
Their fullness of sunshine or sorrowful night.
Let them go, since we cannot relive them,
Cannot undo, and cannot atone.
God in His mercy, receive, forgive them;
Only the new days are our own
Today is ours, and today alone.
Here are the skies all burnished brightly,
Here is the spent earth all reborn,
Here are the tired limbs springing lightly
To face the sun and to share with the morn,
In the chrism of dew and the cool of dawn.
Everyday is a fresh beginning;
Listen, my soul, to the glad refrain,
And, spite of old sorrow and old sinning,
And puzzles forecasted and possible pain,
Take heart with the day, and begin again.
May God allow you to find a new beginning in these days.
