As we set off into yet another new year, it’s amazing how many people can’t see the new beginnings that God has ready and waiting for them. So for some of us, it’s time to open our eyes … it’s either that, or miss out.

NEW MERCIES

Have you ever been at a New Year’s eve party, and everybody’s celebrating and yahooing and carrying on, and then there’s the countdown: Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, Happy New Year! And there’s lots of kissing and hugging and all that stuff, and yet the last thing you feel like doing is celebrating. What is there to celebrate? Last year was somewhere between a real shocker and nothing out of the ordinary. This year, well … It looks a bit … well, you know … and so you look around at all these other people smiling and laughing and slapping each other on the back, and inside you feel just a bit empty.

If that’s a bit how the beginning of this year feels for you, well, you wouldn’t be alone, seriously. So many people have nothing much to celebrate really, or so it seems, and for many, there’s a sense that the business of last year isn’t finished yet. A lot of that has to do with the regrets of the past; the hurts of the past; the losses or the abuse or the rejection of the past, and the biggest one of all, the failures of the past.

So many people feel as though they’ve failed at their job, at their marriage, at bringing up their kids, at loving God, and the problem with those failures is that it’s often somewhere between very difficult and absolutely impossible to set things right. I suspect each one of us, if we’re a bit honest with ourselves today, we have some regrets from last year that are still hanging over us, and often, those regrets have a lot to do with our failures.

So we set off into this New Year with a sense of failure, and the sense that we’re a failure. I am a failure, and if we’re not careful, that sense of failure, that sense of doom and gloom, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The next year turns out just the same as the last one. If you’re anywhere near to being in that space at the moment (come on, be honest with yourself), then I have some great, great news for you today. Our God is a God of new beginnings and His mercies are new today, tomorrow, the next day – indeed every day and every morning.

As the writer of the book of Lamentations looked around at the terrible destruction of Jerusalem, after the Babylonians came as an instrument of God’s judgment and raised it to the ground, taking the Israelites captive as slaves into exile, he was devastated, but then somewhere inside, the Holy Spirit moved him to say and to write these words. Lamentations 3:19-26:

The thought of my affliction and my homelessness is wormwood and gall. My soul continuously thinks of it and is bowed down within me, but this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: For the steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. The LORD is my portion, says my soul; therefore I will hope in Him. The LORD is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul that seeks Him, and it is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD.

That is such an incredibly poignant passage of Scripture. This man who is devastated not just for himself, but for his homeland, for his people, for the destruction of God’s temple even and the loss of His presence, this guy is stirred and moved deep inside somewhere to declare that the steadfast love of the LORD never ceases! His mercies never come to an end, for they are new every morning.

Let me take that and personalise it for you. God’s steadfast love towards you never ceases. His mercies for you are fresh and new for you each and every morning. Now if you’re at all human, you’re thinking to yourself, “Oh, Berni, that’s all fine, but if you knew how badly I blew things last year, how badly I behaved, how badly I failed other people and God, you’d know how hard it is for me to accept that.”

We often think we’re the only person thinking like that, when in fact this sense of guilt that flows out of failure is one of the most common things that people experience. It’s a natural response-mechanism that God’s put in each one of us to get us to realise that our only answer, our only refuge, our only future, our only hope, is in Him.

Do you remember the story of Moses going up to the top of Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments from God? And God writes those commandments on two tablets of stone, but whilst Moses and God are up there doing business on the mountain, God’s people have cast an idol for themselves. Led by Moses’ brother Aaron the high priest, they melt down all their gold and cast a golden calf that they bow down and worship.

Moses comes down the mountain; he’s so angry, so incensed at these faithless people that he smashes the stone tablets with the commandments on them. You’d think (wouldn’t you) at this point, it’d be over. It probably would have been, had you or I been God, but you see, God’s mercies are new every morning, so Exodus 34 starts off this way (verses 1 and 2):

The LORD said to Moses, “Cut two tablets of stone like the former ones, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the former tablets which you broke. Be ready in the morning, and come up in the morning to Mount Sinai and present yourself there to me, on-top of the mountain”.

And so he did. He went up to the mountain again and God gave him the commandments again. Why? Well, God explains Himself a few verses later. Exodus 34:6:

The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness”.

That’s who God is. God is mercy; God is love, and that mercy and that love are for you, here and now, at the beginning of this year. If only you’ll turn your regrets and your failures over to God, what a fresh start this New Year could be for you.

 

NEW STRENGTH

Even the strongest among us find ourselves feeling tired and weak sometimes. It’s not that you’re a loser, and it’s certainly not that you’re the only person on the planet that feels that way, but the daily grind has a way of … well … grinding you down, doesn’t it? Add to that the stresses and strains that life brings, especially if last year wasn’t all you wanted it to be, especially if last year had some hurts or some failures or some losses that you weren’t anticipating and you’re struggling to get over them.

You see, it’s easy to start the new year off feeling drained; not ready to face the challenges that lie ahead. We’re kicking this year off with a series of messages that I’ve called ‘New Year, Fresh Start’ because God is a God of new beginnings, and one of the things that He wants to do for you is to renew your strength.

Now, renew is a word that I love. It’s an amazing word, two parts: Re and new. We all know what the new means. Something that’s new is brand-new: A new experience, a new mercy, a new love, a new hope, a new life … Newness is fresh! It’s exciting! It’s a new start! But that re part of renew is about doing something new again. Most of the time in the English language, when a word starts with the syllable re it means again: Repeat, review, re-enter, reactivate, reaffirm and on it goes, so humour me, and think about this word renew for just a moment.

It means to do that new thing again. It means to enter into newness a second time, a third time, a fourth time, a thousandth time, and that’s the sense with which I’m asking you to understand this amazing passage of Scripture. Isaiah 40:27-41:1:

Why do you say, o Jacob, and speak...