Prov 3:5-6 “Trust in the LORD with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek his will in all you do, and he will direct your paths.” There is no better way to begin a new year than to focus on His Word and allow it to speak to our heart for a check-up on our commitment to Him. The beginning of a new year is also a good time to review the old year and analyze the impact that 2011 had on our life. Most of us began the year with many hopes that would greatly affect our life in a positive way. Now is the time to look at each of those hopes to see if we saw the results, for which we had “hoped.”
The Bible tells us that hope is a confident expectancy. It is shown alongside words such as faith, and love and is a very positive attribute for one to possess. Genuine hope is not dreaming, but a firm assurance about things that are unseen and still in the future. Expectation, whether in hope or dread, is looking forward with the realization that something specific will happen. Unfortunately, many are living with a daydreaming hope. Jimmy Carter stated that many are living with a hope that says, “If I could just hit the lottery and win five million bucks, then all my troubles would be over. But those are false hopes.”[1]
We can use 2011 as a platform for building positive plans that will turn our hopes for greater things into expectations. Perhaps it will be a specific plan for health improvement, a plan to pay off those credit cards, a plan to live by a well-defined budget or to go back to school and reach a specific goal. It may also be just as simple to spend more quality time with the family. These are positive hopes that will require a specific plan to ensure one of living a life of anticipation and expectation. We need not live by an attitude of “I hope things are better next year,” because we can live by a plan of knowing the hopes are not just dreams; they are realities just waiting to happen.
If things do not go just the way we plan, we must not lose hope! We can be like the little boy that was playing on a softball team and at a very important game, the team was losing eighteen to nothing. An older person came by and said, “You must be very discouraged with that score.” The boy replied, “Why should I be discouraged? We just haven’t our turn at bat.” If your plan hasn’t gone the way you hoped it would go, perhaps you just haven’t had your turn at the bat.” Lewis Smedes wrote, “Is there a hope when hope is taken away? Is there hope when the situation is hopeless? That question leads us to Christian hope, for in the Bible, hope is no longer a passion for the possible. It becomes a passion for the promise.”[2]
In 2012, we can renew our “trust in the Lord,” and by knowing that He will direct our paths, it will help to keep our hopes and expectations alive. It is through Him that we can say with the Apostle Paul, “For I live in eager expectation and hope that I will never do anything that causes me shame, but that I will always be bold for Christ, as I have been in the past, and that my life will always honor Christ, whether I live or I die.”[3]
Let us determine that 2012 will be a great year and know that the answers to our hopes and expectations are in the waiting and anxiously waiting to happen!
Happy New Year!
