New Beginnings

Wow! The past two months have been so busy, three birthdays in November and then Thanksgiving, one birthday in December and then Christmas, and two birthdays on New Year’s Day, can I say I wore out? I love the season and all the time spent with family but sometimes I forget to stop and just enjoy the moment, to really be present. To me time is so much more important and yet I get caught up in the cooking and cleaning and present buying to the point I am so tired I’m happy when it is over. I woke up this morning thinking about a new beginning and all the things I need to work on and change and where do I begin. As I quieted down and started speaking with God He reminded me that change belongs to Him. Ephesians 4:

17Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. 18They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. 19They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. 20But that is not the way you learned Christ!— 21assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, 22to put off your old self,^f which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, 23and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness

This is the new beginning and I have received it, I have spent the last year trying to deal with the past and overcome the hurdles that continually bring me back to this feeling of not enough but today God has said let it go! I have a life I should not own, and I am a new creation! My new beginning started many years ago and God and I have walk through many trials together, most of the way He has carried me sometimes kicking and screaming, but always together, and I am no longer the same person. Just to spend time reflecting on where I am and where I have been is an incredible reminder of God’s faithfulness. I am blessed and I don’t use that loosely, I once looked at the future with a feeling of hopelessness and discouragement and God has given me a new vision. Some of the things in my life have not changed and some of the generational garbage of the past continues to be lived out in front of me but it doesn’t have to own me. I look forward to what the future holds but I am filled with joy for today, for the opportunity to share the goodness of my God with anyone that just might need to hear it. Who I have been is a product of what someone else has believed me to be but who I am becoming is the person God created me to be, the difference is put this way: “I set before you life and death; choose life”. Jeremiah said it best:

11For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare^b and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. 12Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. 13You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.

WHAT A GOD! And He calls me beloved!