Making plans and then actually following through is a way of showing integrity and it’s what pleases God.

Well, here we are. A happy and blessed new year to you. But before we can step into this new year with gusto, with that sense of anticipation of what it'll bring, we need to let go of the regrets of the past. Absolutely, we do!

In early 20th-century China, Empress Dowager Longyu signed the abdication of the last emperor, ending over two thousand years of imperial rule. It was the right thing for peace, but she never recovered. Trapped in the Forbidden City she withdrew, clung to her rituals, and mourned her lost grandeur.

Regret devoured her. She died just months later, broken and forgotten. Here was a woman who could have shaped a new role, a new future, but chose instead to bury herself in the past.

The truth is that regret doesn't knock loudly, it whispers. And if you listen for too long, it'll lock you in a palace with no doors.

Isaiah 43:18-19 So don't remember what happened in earlier times. Don't think about what happened a long time ago, because I am doing something new! Now you will grow like a new plant. Surely you know this is true. I will even make a road in the desert, and rivers will flow through that dry land.

No amount of regret can change what happened in years gone by. It'll only destroy your present and rob you of your future, of the life that God sent Jesus His Son for you to live in all its abundance, no matter what the world throws at you.

It's a new year. God is doing something new! Surely you know it's true.

That's His Word. Fresh … for you … today.

You know, over this Christmas-New Year period, I've been praying for you and everybody else who listens to this program – that the coming year will be a year where you're set free from the things that have enslaved you, because freedom, as it turns out, is just about the biggest gift that God can give us.

This is just such a wonderful time of the year. The sense of a new start, a new beginning and yet, as we've been reflecting this week on "A Different Perspective", it's so easy for the hurts and regrets of the past to haunt us, to hold us back in the New Year.

And we can literally be enslaved by behaviours, habits and things that we think and do but if we truly thought about it, we'd admit to ourselves, "Well, they're wrong." But somehow they can hold us captive and rob us of a life worth living.

I wonder if I asked you to look at your life, what are those things? What are the chains that hold you back? What are the things that enslave you?

Slavery, being enslaved is not something we think much about these days. I mean really, isn't it a thing of the past? Sure Negro's were taken to the United States and to the United Kingdom and that's all over and done with. That's the past. We don't have slavery anymore.

Well, actually that's not true. The estimates are … there are about 27 million people living in slavery in the world today – 27 million people. That's more than at any other time in history. Add to those official slaves, if I can call them that, people living and working in the export processing zones of Indonesia, of Malaysia, right across South East Asia. Millions of people being paid a few cents an hour in almost slave like conditions to make the clothes and the runners and the shoes and the toys that we in the West take for granted.

And what about the people that are enslaved by poverty? The number is probably in the hundreds of millions. When you look at it like that it's a startling, painful, horrible reality.

Slavery is flourishing if I can put it in those terms but I would like to suggest to you that it's much, much bigger than even that.

Over this last week on "A Different Perspective", we've been talking about the things that hold us back – the regrets, the thoughts, the behaviours, the habits, the negative things, the things that if we were really honest with ourselves we'd say, "I know they're wrong." Those things bear bad fruit in our lives and you know something? They're just like the chains that the Negro's had around their ankles when they were being shipped from Africa to America.

Jesus made that point. He talked about it in terms of sin. I'll talk about what sin means in a minute but listen to what He said for a bit. He wants us to have an abundant life and He said, "Look, if you are involved in sin it's like you're a slave to sin," and He said, "I've come to give you an abundant, rich and full life."

He never denied that we'd have tough times but the whole subject of sin was something He talked a lot about. And the word sin means something very specific. We load it with a whole bunch of cultural and theological baggage I think sometimes. But the word "sin" means literally "to miss the point", to miss the point of life, to miss out on the share of what's on offer.

When you look at it in that sense you think, "Well, it does make sense, I know that when I get angry with people, I'm ruining my life and I'm ruining theirs. I know when I talk behind people's backs, I know when I stab them in the back when they're not there, I know that's not good. I might want to do it, I've been used to doing it but I know that actually what it does is that it robs me of a life worth living."

Jesus said this:

I tell you the truth, anyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family but a son or a daughter belongs to it forever. (John 8:34-35)

I have met peopl

We honor God when we view our bodies as His home.

Well, here we are, about to step over the threshold into yet another new year. The old one's pretty much done and dusted, consigned into the catalogue of years gone by. The new one is about to begin. So allow me, if you will, to ask you an important question. As you step into next year, which path will you take? The high road or the low road?

In 44 BC, Marcus Junius Brutus stood in the shadows of the Roman Senate, dagger in hand. Julius Caesar—his mentor and friend—walked unknowingly into the trap. Brutus believed that he was saving the Republic. But in choosing betrayal over dialogue, murder over mercy, he unleashed chaos.

Rome didn't return to freedom—instead, it spiralled into a brutal empire. Civil war ensued. Brutus died by his own hand. His name is etched in history not as a saviour, but as a symbol of treachery. He chose the wrong path.

Which path will you choose this year? Will you take the high road, or will you coast down the low road? Here's God's take, God's loving advice to you, as you contemplate the year ahead:

Proverbs 4:26-27 Give careful thought to the paths for your feet and be steadfast in all your ways. Do not turn to the right or the left; keep your foot from evil. (NIV)

It's all too easy, like Brutus, to mask bad choices, deluding ourselves that we're doing the right thing. But once the blade is drawn, there's no going back. The alternative is to remain resolute, walking on the side of goodness, integrity and love.

Give careful thought to the paths for your feet and be steadfast in all your ways. Do not turn to the right or the left; keep your foot from evil.

That's God's Word. Fresh … for you … today.

One of the things that this bit of a pause between Christmas and New Year affords us, is some time to draw breath and decide what we're going to do differently next year. So … as you stand on the threshold of a new year … what are you going to do differently next year?

Here we are in this funny week in between Christmas and the New Year and I thought (together) we might look back on the year that's been and forward at the year ahead. It's a bit of a turning point, I guess, between what's been and what's going to be.

Over the last couple of days, we've looked at the year in review – what's been. In particular, yesterday, we had a chat about dealing with the pain of regret. Today, I'd like to take one step further. We're going to look at turning things around. Just looking at your life, here and now – where you're at? What in your life would you like to see turned around?

Probably since calendar's were first invented, people have been making New Years' resolutions. You know the ones: "I'm going to lose some weight this year, I'm going to give up cigarettes and smoking, I'm going to achieve this, I'm going to work harder at that, I'm going to go to the gym every day." You know because you've been there. I've been there. We've done that, we've got the t-shirt. It's a natural thing to do in this funny little week between Christmas and New Year.

A lot of people, whether they're in the Northern Hemisphere in a cold winter or in the Southern Hemisphere here in a warm summer, a lot of people have this week off. And we like to look back at the things that have been and think, "Well, you know, it wasn't a bad year or it's a lousy year or I would have done this differently". And we also look forward – we dream, we hope, we plan. There's something, I don't know, wonderful about contemplating the next year in the New Year.

But it's also true that by and large, the resolutions that we make in this quiet Christmas/New Year period, well, they normally don't last. By the end of January, most New Years' resolutions have been broken at least a dozen times. And what we do after we break them because it's such an incredible sense of failure, "I didn't even get to the end of the first month of the year", you know that feeling – we bury them. We don't want to actually even remember that we made them because it's such an embarrassment that we failed so early.

Are you with me or am I the only one going out on a limb here?

But as we look back on this last year, there are some good things that happened to us and I guess there are some not so good, some bad things that happened. And you look at the bad things, some of those things are completely out of our control but some of the bad things that happen to us are within my control. They're because we do silly things and New Years' resolutions are generally about changing those things.

If someone's overweight, the reason (normally) that they're overweight is because they eat too much and they don't exercise enough. And so a New Year's resolution is taking those things that are in our control that are causing us grief or pain or just things we want to change and making a resolution of short-term pain for future gain.

Losing weight is about sacrificing in the short-term, not eating the chocolates and the biscuits and the cakes and all of those sorts of things, right? So that we can fit into our clothes again and we can feel better and we're healthier and we have more energy. The formula of the New Year's resolution is the same every time – short-term pain for future gain.

It's about achieving something. And you know when there are things that are in our control that are bearing bad fruit in our lives like over eating, like drinking too much, like smoking, like being super critical, like gossiping, like … the list, you know the list. We all know the list. We all have some of these things in our lives.

On the one hand, we c

If you follow Jesus, you’ve got family all over the globe.

Admitting your own flaws, facing up to the reality that we each have chinks in our armour, taking responsibility for them, is incredibly difficult. Yet if we don't, they'll get us into a world of trouble.

Piero de' Medici, son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, was the richest man in Florence. But unlike his wise father, young Piero ignored the warnings and overestimated his charm. So in 1494, he handed Florence over to the invading French without a fight.

The people turned on him. He was exiled, disgraced, and forgotten. He never stopped to ask, "What am I doing wrong?" Pride blinded him. And pride … well, it always has the last word.

That pride-induced inability that we each have to see, own, and deal with our innate failings can, without doubt, lead us into major blunders in our lives too. And if not major blunders, then a string of mistakes that'll conspire to rob us of the life we could have lived, the impact on this world we could have had. So …

2 Corinthians 13:5 Look closely at yourselves. Test yourselves to see if you are living in the faith. Don't you realise that Christ Jesus is in you? Of course, if you fail the test, he is not in you.

Is today perhaps the day to take a closer look at yourself, to test yourself? Am I really who I think I am? Am I really living for Jesus? Is He really the Lord of my life … or am I kidding myself?

It never hurts to take a closer look.

That's God's Word. Fresh … for you … today.

As you look back on this last year, I wonder … what would you have done differently? It's worth thinking about, because whilst you can't wind the clock back and do them over, a bit of reflection can help you think about how you're going to handle things in the new year ahead.

Well, here we are in this week between Christmas and New Year. It's a funny kind of week, really, looking back on the year that's just been and with the other part of us looking forward at the year that might be. But sometimes the thing that stops us from really getting on and living this next year to the full – is the regret of the year that's just been or maybe the year before or maybe the year before that. We all do things that later we regret.

I wonder if I were to ask you to look back over this last year and pick just three things that you regret. What would they be?

I truly believe that sometimes we need to look back before we can look forward. Now, I'm not one for living in the past and wallowing in regret. But regret is a funny thing. Regret is about lost opportunities.

If only I hadn't done, if only I'd done this and a related word is reproach. It's a sense of blame or guilt that hangs over us from the past because of the mistakes we made, the things we should have done but didn't, the things we could have done but didn't and the things we did but we shouldn't have done. And those three things they bear bad fruit in our lives. They cause pain.

It's interesting. There's a prayer in the Old Testament of the Bible, 1 Chronicles chapter 4. It's called The Prayer of Jabez and one of the things that Jabez prays is:

Lord keep me from evil that I would not cause any pain. (1 Chronicles 4:10)

When you and I do dumb things which we do from time to time, it causes pain, either to us or the people around us or in fact, to both.

And as we sit here looking forward to a new year, let's just cast our eyes back on the year that's been and think, what are the things that bring that sense of reproach, that sense of regret on our lives?

And truly unless we deal with the regret, the reproach of the past, we just can't move on and enjoy – I mean really enjoy the future. Actually this is quite a common problem. All sorts of people spend their lives carrying around all sorts of baggage that is best left in the past.

Yesterday, on A Different Perspective, we talked about taking stock of the year that's just been. On the one side of the page, listing all the positives, all the wonderful things that have happened in life. I don't know about you but I look back on my life and I think, "Gee! This last year has been a wonderful year". It's been a tough year, it's been a hard year too but there are so many things I can look back on and think, "God's blessed me here and this has been wonderful and that's been wonderful."

And then on the other side of the page, listing the negatives, the downers, the bad things that have happened either outside of our control that has impacted on us like the London bombing. I mean imagine sitting on the bus at Taverstock Square and all of a sudden the bomb goes off. Nothing that anybody other than the bomber himself could have done about that.

Sometimes bad things happen to us that are completely beyond our control. Other times, bad things happen to us because buggerlugs me or buggerlugs you, do some stupid things. And there are a whole bunch of different areas in our lives where we could be harbouring regret.

Maybe you've worked too hard this year and haven't spent enough time with your family. Maybe there's been a relationship breakdown, just not enough time invested in that relationship. What opportunities did we miss last year?

It's a funny thing how this regret just hangs over us. And you know what we then try and do? We try to deny the root cause. We all do that. We don't want to acknowledge tha

Are you willing to allow God to put you in a place where only His power will enable you to move forward?