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Are You Expecting Something New This Year?
In Isaiah 43:19, God says, “ See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” With the old and wrong mindset, it is impossible to see anything new come into your life, and even if it comes, you might miss it because you were not expecting it or you were too busy preoccupied with the past, that you don’t even know the difference.
You have to go back to a time and a place when you used to see God working and no wonder God reminds you that you should return to Him, and He will return to you as said in Zechariah 1:3. Without doing this you will always be behind or ahead of where God wants you to be. So are you ahead of God or behind God and if so that is maybe why you are missing each other.
Sometimes we are so far from God that we can’t connect and hear Him and that is why the Book of James 4:8 says, “Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you.” And then Isaiah 1:18 further reminds us that after we draw near to God He will start doing new things like cleaning us so that we can see him and hear Him well. After all, what makes God seem and feel like he is so far is our sins, (Isaiah 59:1-2) which changes our perception of God. Do you want to be restored and also see new things, well you can only do this by returning to God according to Job 22:23.
It is always God’s intention to do something new to us, since his mercies are new every day (Lamentations 3:22-23) so are the things he wants to do for us. Do you remember that God gave the children of Israel fresh manna every day (Exodus 16:4). What I am saying is that God has new opportunities, favours, etc so he doesn’t run short of new ones.
Simply because you are either lazy or you don’t want to follow God’s instructions it doesn’t mean that God has run short of ways of blessing you, remember according to Isaiah 55:8-9, “God’s ways and thoughts are above ours” meaning that he can do new things always.
Yes, you might have settled for failure or even people might have written you off, but that is about to change. God is going to do something new in your life, so just do your part and let God do the rest. Have you prayed, fasted, read the Bible, and given as you should?
Brethren simply because nothing seems to be happening it doesn’t mean that God is doing nothing, it might be above your things just as in the case of Gehazi when he thought that the enemy was the one doing something, but when God opened his eyes he was shocked to see that God had already something and he was waiting for Gehazi to come on board.
When you keep playing the negative old song of how this person hurt you or that didn’t work out, it will only hurt you and more so limit you. You can never laugh and at the same time be sad, you have to do one to see the results.
When a piece of furniture is kept in the open for a long it accumulates dust and loses its real beauty and if you want to see its true beauty then you have to clean it, in short, you have to get rid of the dust to reach the former glory and beauty. No wonder in the Book of Isaiah 61:3 God says give me the ashes which is the hurts, failures, disappointments, etc and I will give you the new opportunities, new destiny helpers, etc
Remember that the new thing God is going to do is not going to be natural but supernatural in short it won’t make sense how and why it happened that way. No wonder in the Book of Psalm 37:19 we see that the righteous have more than enough in times of famine. So don’t limit what God can do to our own opinions, studies, economy etc.
Remember the case of that officer in the Book of 2 Kings 7:18-20, who due to his book knowledge didn’t see how or what the man of God was saying would happen and he missed it because he wasn’t waiting for it. How many things have you missed because you didn’t believe in the process or the person or the system and hence as a result you missed them?
What might look like a setback God is going to use it as a setup to bless you. In the Book of Psalm 78:19,41, it says “They even spoke against God himself, saying, “God can’t give us food in the wilderness…Yes, again and again they tempted God, And limited the Holy One of Israel.” Could it be that you might have limited God from blessing you through the way you talk or act? I will never be healed, married, or rich, and such things like this can limit God from doing that new thing.
Learn to get in agreement with God but remember that you have to get in agreement with your fellow beings that is what the Book of Matthew 18:19, “I also tell you this: If two of you agree here on earth concerning anything you ask, my Father in heaven will do it for you.”
A Story Of A Bamboo Seed To Illustrate When You Are waiting When You don’t see Anything.
A Chinese bamboo tree takes five years to grow. It has to be watered and fertilized in the ground where it has been planted every day. It doesn’t break through the ground for five years. After five years, once it breaks through the ground, will it grow 90 feet tall in five weeks! or in five years? Said Les Brown, the answer is obvious, it grows 90 feet tall in 5 years. If at any time that person stopped watering and fertilizing that tree, it would die in the ground. Some people do not have the patience to wait for the tree to grow, yet many people do.
What we can learn from this bamboo tree is: 1. Are you working hard but not seeing the results you want? 2. Don’t despair, if you are working on the right things then if you just keep going long enough you will break through. 3. All the successful people in life have been through the tough times and wanted to give up, but they didn’t and eventually found success. 4. Even if it takes 5 years the results are always worth the effort – it’s not how you start but how you finish which counts.
Pastor Nathaniel
