A New Year dawns. It’s here!
It’s a time for celebrations for many people. In the midst of all of these events, let me inquire, “How do you approach and participate in the New Year traditional times of human resolutions, many made and soon broken?” Sometimes these are broken sooner than later …
Not to create a downer here … but the question is valid. Ask it of yourself? Try it and see what answers you come up with for you. And those you love.
I recommend obtaining a New Heart as you approach a New Start. Let your choice become a model for others they desire to emulate as they see a New Heart change you, mold you, and remake you. Impossible? No, this action and example has been around for a long time: actually, since the dawn if time itself.
Reality: A fresh start *always* means looking back and gazing forward *simultaneously* with honesty. Most individuals try to come to grips with what they have done, evaluate deeds, means, and ends, considering changes as they endeavor to make amends, try again, applying effort for a time, engaging energetically, confronting failure and success.
I’ll be plain and forthright here: when you consider a fresh start, do this: let God transform your heart first. How?
Fortunately, when that desire is prayed earnestly with all the faith you may have, or seek to have, God will honor this need for a new heart, and He can and will create a new heart (the term, heart, means the core of who you are, not the physical organ that pumps the blood, though He can remake that, too!). Your new heart which God offers, (the center of who you are) is positioned to be in alignment with His Will and Ways, and this is only possible when you and I *willingly submit* to God’s leading and the desire to earnestly follow Him, and no one else.
In this a fair tradeoff? Remember, it’s giving God your old heart, and receiving a new one. Though we are not “worthy” of this tradeoff, we receive this gift through His grace, an unmerited favor, freely. We are told this gift really is a gift: it cannot be earned.
A contractual provision between the God who created the Universe as well as you and me, seems stacked in our favor, simply because it is. Can this tradeoff be true and valid, applicable to you and me?
Thankfully, the answer is “yes.” A New Heart will usher in a New Start, both designed by God, Himself.