What Can You Do?

New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, a time to get together with friends and celebrate the coming of the next 12 months. Maybe have a drink or two.

It is also a time to listen to sports analysts telling us which teams will win the big game and which teams will suffer destruction.

And of course, it is a time to actually watch the big game.

 New Year’s is also a time for renewal; a time for resolution. A time to lose some weight. A time to join an exercise club. A time to change a habit.

 Today’s reading is Zephaniah 1:1-3. Zephaniah, a prophet living about 620 BC during the reign of King Josiah, warns Judah of its coming ruin for not following the Lord and his laws and commandments..

 Zephaniah’s prophecy was for those living in Judah at the time, but it also is for us.

 Those who are not believers will suffer eternal punishment. They will be destroyed, just like creation, on Judgment Day. As Zephaniah says, “The wicked will have only heaps of rubble when I cut off man from the face of the earth.”

Those who are believers will also be cut off from the face of the earth, but they will have a better place. Believers will be ushered off to Heaven!

Zephaniah is a bit like the sports analysts that tell us who is going to win the big game. The sports analysts are often times wrong. On the other hand, Zephaniah is 100% correct. Destruction is coming.

 The Israelites were to follow God’s Law. We, followers of Jesus, are to grow his Kingdom. Growing his Kingdom is the only way to bring non-believers to faith, saving them from eternal destruction.

 We are to share the Gospel, we are to care and love others and we are to help others in faith to grow their faith.

 Many of us will make resolutions for the coming year and that is good. Let’s also remember to make a resolution for God.

 What can you do in 2016 to help grow the Kingdom of God?

 Happy New Year!

Lamentations 3: 22-24

Lamentations is not a book I am familiar with, so I began where my mother always said I should...at the beginning. Wow! It made me think of the United States and how it was once an endearing place in the eyes of other countries. Little by little our honor, and integrity is diminishing and we are becoming despised and attacked by others. Lamentations 1:1 reads: How deserted lies the city, once so full of people! How like a widow is she, who once was the greatest among the nations! She who was queen among the provinces has now become a slave."

The book continues on this same theme one verse after another. I could feel my heart identify with our present situation, as well as the future of our children and our children's children. It was difficult not to take every word personally and on a national scale, feeling a sense of devistation and hopelessness. Then, as He always does, God began molding my heart like clay. As I neared the passage for today, the tone began to change... Amen! "Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness."

Amidst the hate, destruction, immorality, and violence of this world, our God remains faithful when we look to Him. "I say to myself, the Lord is my portion: therefore I will wait for Him."