Dear BPCWAians, Blessed New Year wishes in the Name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ! Count down to the new year occurred around the world last night, and celebrations continue today and will probably continue for several more days. What is the world hoping for and looking forward to? I guess to some, it is with a hope for a better year ahead than the past ones. To others, it is to resolve to live better, do better, and achieve more. Well, of course there are those who are happy just to have any reason to party, drink, and make merry. But what should be in the Christian’s thoughts as we enter the New Year?
In Exodus 12, in the month God brought His people out of Egypt, He told them it would commence a new year for them. He said, “This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall bethe first month of the year to you.” It would begin a new calendar altogether with new names for the months for them. What did God want His people at that time to have in mind with this new calendar? Was it merely to have a different calendar?
As they left Egypt, the principle God wanted to instil in His children was that of the start of a new order of life – that God will give them a new life with a new way of worship, new holy days, and a new culture altogether. It was to symbolize a fresh start and to leave Egypt’s ways and lifestyle behind and to forget it forever. These all indicated a new and unique spiritual significance to them. It was for a spriritual purpose. Christians today need not have a different calendar just so that we do not use the secular one. We do not see this injunction to the New Testament believers. But the principle remains. Like the children of Israel, we must have a totally new perspective of life and living. Our objectives, purposes, and aims are not to be like the world. Each new year must remind us again of the new life in Christ. After salvation, each day, each month, and each year must be lived for Christ alone, and not for self ambitions and pursuits. And with each passing year, we must grow more conformed to the image of Christ than the previous year. This is what should be on the believers’ mind as we enter each new year. We look forward to the new year as a church, as a family, and as an individual, aiming to love the Lord more fervently, serve Him more diligently, and obey Him more faithfully.
But taking the children of Israel out of Egypt was easier than taking Egypt out of Israel. The people of God physically left Egypt but the ways of Egypt, the idols, and the sinful desires lingered in many of them. If this were so with any of us, let us resolve that 2017 will be the year that we will truly resolve to pursue after God wholeheartedly.
Here are some ways you can resolve to do this. Husbands and fathers, commit to lead your families to study the Word seriously, to bring them church to learn and grow, and to take up an area of service for the Lord’s Kingdom. Wives and children, resolve to follow your husbands and fathers, leaving aside worldly activities that do not contribute to your spiritual growth. And individuals, determine to use your time, working leave, resources, and talents to pursue God in His Word, and crucify the flesh which is reluctant to study the Word, serve, and grow in the Lord. What has kept you back in 2016 from growing spiritually? It is time to lay it aside. Will you take time today to resolve to do these in your families and individually?
“Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us” Heb 12:1.
It is time to make a total clean break from our “Egypts” with its pomp and pride, and start a new order of life in our personal walk and family life. May we not only enter 2017 with such a resolution, but to take actions to do so by His enabling grace! As a church, let us be our brother’s keeper, and stir each other on to walk for Christ in the upcoming year!
Yours in our Lord’s service
Pastor