Ring in 2026!

Celebrate tonight!You made it through another year! Were you blessed in ways unimaginable? Give thanks to the Lord for it! Was it a difficult year filled with pain, suffering, leaving you wondering what was to come? Thank God that He sustained you. His work is not done. The story is not over. God will bring something good out of it if you love Him and are called to his purposes. That's his promise in the Bible's book of Romans, chapter 8. They key word is "if". I'm holding on now for a better year. Let's see what God has planned for 2026 together.

No End of Year List

By this time in years past, I have posted on "The Best of Year______", my hopes and dreams for the coming one, and my disappointments and delights from the previous year. Not today. From the highs (like a trip to Rome and Paris with some of our best friends) to the lows (loss of a parent and more), 2023 was certainly a mixed bag. So as you celebrate the end of the year and the new one coming, know that in the midst of life's ups and downs, there's a whole new eternal life to consider. Jesus is calling people to himself. Is He calling you?

My New Year's Eve Wish

I haven't looked this good in a tuxedo in years! Well, actually, I cannot lie. This is a stock photo, but there are few things that say New Year's Eve party like dressing up and going out for a night on the town. Unless it's a COVID-19 world, and it's just better to celebrate at home with those you love. 

Just remember as you say goodbye to this year and hello to another: "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind can conceive, what God has planned for those who love Him." (1 Corinthians 2:9). May He bless you and yours in the coming year!

What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?

However you choose to celebrate New Year's Eve, be safe and responsible so you and others can enjoy 2020 without regret. Even if 2019 has been one of the worst possible for you, the new year offers fresh opportunities and unique beauty. Thanks for reading the Insights blog this year! 

Let me leave you with these wise words from the great Scottish pastor Oswald Chambers:

You shall not go out with haste,…for the Lord will go before you, and the God of Israel will be your rear guard. —Isaiah 52:12

Security from Yesterday. “…God requires an account of what is past” (Ecclesiastes 3:15). At the end of the year we turn with eagerness to all that God has for the future, and yet anxiety is apt to arise when we remember our yesterdays. Our present enjoyment of God’s grace tends to be lessened by the memory of yesterday’s sins and blunders. But God is the God of our yesterdays, and He allows the memory of them to turn the past into a ministry of spiritual growth for our future. God reminds us of the past to protect us from a very shallow security in the present.

Security for Tomorrow. “…the Lord will go before you….” This is a gracious revelation— that God will send His forces out where we have failed to do so. He will keep watch so that we will not be tripped up again by the same failures, as would undoubtedly happen if He were not our “rear guard.” And God’s hand reaches back to the past, settling all the claims against our conscience.

Security for Today. “You shall not go out with haste….” As we go forth into the coming year, let it not be in the haste of impetuous, forgetful delight, nor with the quickness of impulsive thoughtlessness. But let us go out with the patient power of knowing that the God of Israel will go before us. Our yesterdays hold broken and irreversible things for us. It is true that we have lost opportunities that will never return, but God can transform this destructive anxiety into a constructive thoughtfulness for the future. Let the past rest, but let it rest in the sweet embrace of Christ.

Leave the broken, irreversible past in His hands, and step out into the invincible future with Him.

A Time to Celebrate

As you celebrate New Year's Eve tonight, stop and give thanks to God for another year of life on earth! Even in the midst of the hardest of things, His love never fails... even when we don't understand the turning of events in our lives.

May God Bless You in 2016!