The Year Ahead

From January 2016 Bethel Bell Tower newsletter

¹¹[God] has made everything suitable for its time; moreover he has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. ¹²I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; ¹³moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil. ¹⁴I know that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it; God has done this, so that all should stand in awe before him.

~ Ecclesiastes 3:11-14

It has been said that, if you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans. But we want to plan. In fact, we need to plan. The Bible encourages us to plan (Luke 14:25-33). All of the events leading up to Christmas were planned. We spent a lot of time this past year building the budget which is a plan for how we intend to spend money to support Bethel’s ministries. And we are now working on plans for Lent, the end of the Sunday School year, and the summer!

As the reading from Ecclesiastes says, we do have a sense of past and future, but I hear this Scripture urging us to enjoy the life God has given us. Some things are just out of our control, but God’s got us! Sometimes our joy in the present is lessened because something or some-things in our past hold us hostage – we can’t let go of what we did or wished we had done. When I was in college in Texas, I heard a preacher who said “If the devil can’t mess with you about what’s going on in your life now, he’ll start digging up stuff from your past.” Sometimes our ability to enjoy and give thanks to God for the present is sullied or diminished because we worry about the future. Some of us may become hyper focused on developing intricate plans that account for any eventuality.

Don’t let this fool you … I’m not abandoning my plans! I am going to make New Year’s resolutions. I have to make plans that will get me through the year with my doctoral program, and I have to plan well enough in advance to share with you how you can participate in what’s happening. I’ll also be working with Council and all of our Ministry Teams and Task Forces to develop goals. Our plans, our goals, our communication … all of these help us to stay on track. As people of faith, we can’t simply look at the year ahead and ask: “So, what do I want to do this year?” As people of faith, we know that God “has made everything suitable for its time.” We know that God has gifted us and called us to give the very best of ourselves to Him, to our families, to our jobs, to our friends.

As you begin this New Year, I encourage you to pray about your time.

• God, help me to not lose the gifts of the present by dwelling on the past or being consumed by the future.
• God, am I spending time in ways that are God-pleasing?
• God, are there priorities or actions that you want me to pursue?
• God, how can I best honor the gifts you’ve given me – my talents, my possessions, and my relationships?

May God, “the Lord God the Almighty, who was and is and is to come” (Revelation 4:8) bless you in this New Year!

In Christ,

Pastor Jeff