Jesus Offers More Hope Than The New Year

Happy New Year!

I’ll hop straight into it.

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged! My blogging has slowed down because I really haven’t been talking to God and being intentional about making God the priority in my life. Which leads me to not having anything to talk about honestly. I’ve tried blogging when I didn’t feel lead to and I wrote like 3 lines and decided that it wasn’t going to work! You’ll hear a little more about this below. Also, you may notice that the words below are copied and pasted from my last Facebook post. Stick around! Don’t leave! I wanted to expand a little more on these words and show you something cool I believe God showed me one morning.

“My name is Levi and I’m a 23 year old Black American and this is a small portion of what God has shown me this year.

He gave me a wife that has a different race, personality, attractions, passions, and displays of love. I love her. I learned to embrace my skin color because God is an intentional God and the more that I embrace who I am as a creation, the more I embrace who God is as the Creator. I learned to embrace my culture because many have died for me to have the freedom to type this post, I don’t take it lightly. It’s a blessing. God showed me the deep passion I have for racial reconciliation. Why is it important to me? Because it’s important to Jesus and that can’t be argued. I’m excited to share a project I’ve been working on in 2019 about racial reconciliation that I think will challenge all of us. Not just white people, not just black people, but really anyone that claims Jesus as their savior. We all have work to do. I truly expect a lot of people to unfollow me next year because of this topic and I DON’T CARE 😂. Like I really just don’t care lol because people come and go, but God is constant and forever.

God gave me JOY this year. A joy so beautiful that the darkness that surrounded me at times became more of an opportunity than an enemy. A joy so bold that I no longer have to worry about pleasing my followers/friends with my posts, but focus on worshiping God with my thoughts, posts, actions, etc. A joy so amazing that my circumstances nor emotions could steal it. My circumstances didn’t give me my joy, so how could they take it away?

Lastly, I’ve recently learned that I struggle with self-love and self-forgiveness. These two issues haven’t been resolved completely yet, but I know for a fact that God will not give up on me.

I want to encourage you that God’s not going to give up on you either! Keep believing in His power, keep trusting His Sovereignty, and keep reminding yourself that none of this is possible if He didn’t send Jesus to reconcile and redeem.

Merry Christmas 🙏🏾🙌🏾”

Something that I was thinking about is how the new year brings new feelings and new hope. We feel re-energized, encouraged, and empowered. Isn’t it funny how new things bring, well new things!? I don’t know if that made sense but here’s what I’m getting at:

For most people, we get excited about new oppurtunities, which is what the New Year is. A new year to be a better version of yourself, right? A new oppurtunity to be a better spouse, follower of Jesus, save more money, be nicer to your co-workers, pray more, listen more, etc. We see an oppurtunity to be a better version of ourselves. Here’s what God showed me. That same feeling you may get when a new year arrives and it seems that hope has been restored or replenished, is exactly how Jesus wants you to feel with Him every day that you walk with Him! When December 31st comes around it seems as though we’re at our peak of hope and I truly believe that Jesus wants us to expereince this on a daily basis. He wants us to expereience newness and freshness with Him daily. Not to entertain us to or make sure we’re not bored or some nonsense like that, but to continue showing us more and more of Him! To show us a deeper version of His sacrificial love that saves. To give us a greater look at a grace that is suffiecient! To let us experience betrayal so that we can understand what it really looks like to forgive! Jesus wants us to have a sense of urgency about Him. A sense of excitiement! A noiton of hope! I don’t believe that Jesus wants us to wait until Easter or Christmas for us to have a sense of newness about Him and all that He offers us! No! He offers that every day!

Lamentations 3:22-23

”The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”

HIS MERCIES NEVER COME TO AN END?! AND THEY’RE NEW EVERY MORNING?! AND HIS LOVE NEVER CEASES AND HE IS FAITHFUL!

So Jesus’ mercies are new every day. So what His word is telling us is that we can expereince the new hope, new mercies, new love, new faitfulness that He offers us every single day! It’s basically a holiday every morning because we get showered by His mercies. We don’t have to wait for the New Year, we don’t have to wait for our circumstances to change, our emotions to feel like it, or anything like that. Jesus supplies all our needs and when we need hope and excitement, we can run to Him! Just reading that verse shows me how big God is. It says that His love never ceases! I’ll spend my whole life trying to grasp that He chooses to love me. We have hope in Jesus! We get to experience redemption and hope every single day and that is what Jesus wants us to realize. Jesus offers more hope and excitement than all the New Years combined.

Hope starts with Him. Peace starts with Him. Oppurtunities start with Him. And we don’t have to wait to find this hope. 

Forgive yourself because God has forgiven you. Don’t look only to the new year as the solo reason that you excitingly look forward to moving on from this past year’s mistakes and failures, Jesus wants you to know that His grace is sufficient and that you can depend on Him! In that very moment when you have failed and you don’t feel worthy, He wants to hold you and allow you to see that His mercies are new daily.

In Conclusion: I want to encourage you today: though the new year can bring a sense of excitement that stems from new oppurtunities and our past mistakes being erased, Jesus offers this on a level that no holiday could take the place of. He wants to give you hope, perseverance, confidence, and I believe that He wants to do that today! The New Year that we celebrate with a look of optimism in our eyes is just a glimpse of the eternal hope that Jesus wants to remind you of that He offers. His mercies are new every single day and that, in my opinion, is something very exciting to look forward to. New things are usually exciting, right? Well, let’s remind ourselves that Jesus wants to pour a fresh and new mercy-filled love on us every single day.