It seems fitting to be writing on the subject of resetting at the beginning of the year. To reset, means to start over. When you start over, you are given a clean slate, your previous achievements and or failures are tossed aside, they do not count anymore. As Christians, we have a good Father who is always ready to do a reset on our lives if we would let Him. The goodness of God manifests itself in that “while we were still sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). In the context of a reset, this verse tells us that God prepared a way for a start over of our lives before we were anticipating starting over. This always baffles me and I am forever grateful to the Father for doing this. Today, as we begin a new year, I thought it’d be a good idea to start in the right place, to go back to our first love who is the sure help we have for any situation we go through.
The first commandment in the bible is “to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and strength” (Deuteronomy 6:5). The fact that this is a commandment should indicate to us that it is not something we are prone to do even as redeemed creatures. God requires everything that we are to be His first and foremost: our attention, our finances, our relationships, our lives, etc. I have always wondered why redeemed creatures would find loving the Lord with all their hearts, souls and strength to be difficult, knowing that this God and saviour has done everything for them and loves them more than they can ever love themselves, even with an everlasting love. Indeed, in all logic, loving such a God would seem straightforward and easy to do but as we know, it is the contrary. Loving God with all that I am requires more than a mere desire; this exercise can only be done by the power of God. As the scripture reminds us, “he works in us to will and to act according to his good purpose” (Philippians 2:13). In other words, the desire I have in my heart to love God comes from God, it has been inputted by God and it is God Himself who will enable me to love Him in actions through obedience to His word. I believe this is the first truth we who have put our confidence in the saving work of the Lord Jesus Christ should acknowledge. We cannot obey God’s commands without Him enabling us to obey them. This means we should be constantly seeking His help and praying for His will to be done in our lives like it is in heaven (Matthew 6:10). We have to be dependent on our Father. God has to be the number one priority in every aspects of our lives. How then can we ensure God is the number one priority in our lives? I believe this can be done by making God our only option in life.
Our dependence on God should be reflected in our mundane day to day activities. We should start and end our day with God, as the scripture commands us meditating the word of God day and night should be at the centre of what we do. In the book of Joshua, God tells him to “not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it” (Joshua 1:8). Joshua was given the unique opportunity to carry the baton of leading the people of Israel into the Promised Land. His coming into scene marked a new beginning for the people of Israel. Joshua in a sense was starting over, leading the people of Israel in unfamiliar territory, doing things that had not been done before. With such a huge task ahead of him, God instructs Joshua to keep his dependence on Him by saturating himself with the word of God in order to obey it. We do not have the same responsibility that Joshua had and our sphere of influence isn’t as important as his either but that does not mean we are not supposed to make God the only option of our lives. Indeed, what the Father told Joshua is valid for us today. The way for us to love the Lord with all our heart, soul and strength is by knowing and obeying Him. You cannot love wat you do not know. Even when you have feelings of love in your heart for a person or a thing, your love for that person or thing cannot be sustained just by that feeling if there is no knowledge and action. Knowing the object of our love increases our love for that person. The more we know God, the more we want to obey, the more we love him. The more we fill our minds with God, the more He becomes a priority. The way to achieve this is by practicing spiritual disciplines such as reading and meditating in the word of God, praying, fasting, praising, serving, sharing the good news of Christ with others, etc. As the word discipline suggests, these activities require effort from us. Unfortunately, there is no other way to make God a priority in our life without disciplining ourselves to doing the things He instructs us to do. As we have already seen earlier, we are not wired to do His will naturally, therefore we must force ourselves to do so. The beauty with discipline is that the more you do it, the easier it becomes. The difficulty lies in starting the discipline because God gives us the grace to sustain it. Indeed the Holy Spirit of God, the helper in us is ready to aid us in this task. We are not alone, God wants us to succeed in this goal and He has made a way for us to win.
My prayer this year for you is that you apply yourself to knowledge (Proverbs 23:12), that you invest in God, His will, His desire, His commands, etc. There are many bible plans available to guide you in your bible reading, there are models of prayers to help you in your prayer life, there are books that give you insight on how to meditate the word of God, how to study it, etc. In fact, for any topics that exist, there are books available. I pray you do not let anything stop you from learning, whether lack of finances or the worries of the world. We serve a powerful God who is able to make everything right. Therefore, will you apply yourself to knowing God more this year? I pray you do.
A Word Aptly Spoken 