Are you ready for another new year?

As I spent some time reflecting on the passing year yesterday, I was feeling a bit like it might go out with more of the proverbial whimper rather than a bang. Thinking back to this time last year when so many were hopeful that 2021 would be “better” than 2020, it could be easy to feel as though we are barely crawling over this “finishing line” and really don’t have much energy left to hope for anything. So much of the latter part of this year, for us, has felt like treading water after a shipwreck, barely managing to keep our heads above water. And if we weren’t in that place ourselves, we were trying help others from going under. And yet…

One of the activities I like to do at the end of a year is look back to the beginning – it’s hopes, what I have felt God saying, goals I might have set - to see how these played out through the year. This has been particularly helpful this year as so much of the last month or so has felt “lost”. Even as I acknowledged my sense that I “should” have done more, and the list of what I still haven’t done started to flit through my mind, so much of the good of this year, the positive and productive activities and circumstances, the way God opened doors and shifted so much in our lives (even in ways that didn’t feel so much like Him!) started to flood my thoughts.

No, in the middle of the continuing global upheaval of this year, in the middle of the loss, pain, rejection, fear, anxiety and panic that has roared around like a hurricane, I can come to the end standing upright and say, “It was a good year”. Yes, it is far too easy to look at all the issues and negativity, the darkness, but God is still here, still sovereign and still bringing His plans and purposes to fruition. Anytime I like, I can head to that place of stillness in Him, with Him, in the middle of the storm. I can choose to focus instead on gratitude for what is, or what has been good, rather than living in hopelessness and despair.

Heading my mind toward that place of stillness yesterday morning, the first lines of “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” started playing in my mind. Looking up all the words, I can’t help but see it as a wonderful prayer for this time (check out the whole song here). The first and last verses are:

“O come, O come, Emmanuel, And ransom captive Israel That mourns in lonely exile here Until the Son of God appear.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Desire of nations, bind In one the hearts of all mankind; Bid all our sad divisions cease, And be Thyself our King of Peace.”

The last verse particularly resonates with me. Oh, that our divisions would cease! And what a prayer that has been through the ages. How that might happen is for next week’s blog, though…

Returning to the beginning of the year, there were a few entries from my journal that hit me again. I had been reading through Isaiah, particularly chapter 40 and 41. These chapters are filled with the promise that God does and will show up. That He will make a way where there seems no way, that every obstacle will be removed out of His path, and much about people seeing His glory in plain sight; that it is time to proclaim Him loudly and proudly; that He will be known by all, throughout the earth. The beautiful picture of dry, barren wastelands and deserts turning into springs, into places of lush growth is a central part of the promise here.

Into these reflections, the word God gave me for 2021 was “peace”. As I have shared earlier, it was not a word I immediately embraced. Peace, like patience (and probably every other fruit of the Spirit), generally requires a good dose of the opposite to experience its manifestation. However, into my little rejection of this word, Yeshua whispered, “Shalom” to me. Going on a search through the deeper connotations of this word we so loosely translate “peace”, excited me no end!

Wholeness, healing, restoration, restitution, integrity, harmony, prosperity, welfare, “righteous recompense”, unbrokenness, fullness, “the days of mourning are completed”.

In fact, going back to Is 40:1 (TPT), it begins,

“Comfort, comfort my people with gentle, compassionate words. Speak tenderly from the heart to revive those in Jerusalem, and proclaim that their warfare is over. Her debt of sin is paid for, and she will not be treated as guilty. Prophesy to her that she has received from the hand of Yahweh twice as many blessings as all her sins.”

This sounds very much like “shalom” to me!

So, 2021 started with much hope and excitement for me about what God was going to do. I must confess, that not much of it has been in the format I perhaps expected or would have liked. In fact, I am still processing how some things could be part of His will, especially as they have seemed to have dashed some of my hopes to pieces. However, I will keep seeking Him for the next step and the next step, with the hope, and even confidence, that His plans are better, even when I can’t really see His hand in it.

I refuse to allow disappointment and unmet expectations lead me into a place of bitterness or retreat.

For each of us, in fact, the only way we can step into this new year with hope rather than despair, with joy rather than bitterness is through gratitude. Our gratitude may just be for the opportunities to draw closer to God, to depend on Him in greater measure, to learn more of Who He is for us; it may be finding thankfulness in the little things, like provision or simply for a beautiful day.

If we want to be well positioned for all that 2022 will bring, an attitude of gratitude is a giant step in a life-giving direction, leading us toward freedom, joy and shalom and most importantly, strengthening our connection with Father God, Yeshua, His Son and Holy Spirit.

“Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.”

The roadmap to freedom in the middle of lockdown.

Getting the news a week or so back that we would continue in intense lockdown for at least another two weeks sent me into something of a tailspin. Perhaps, like many, I’d been holding on to the belief that we would be able to at least lift some of the restrictions. But no. The hopelessness, powerlessness and despair I was feeling about our circumstances was threatening to overwhelm me.

Seeking the Lord for a way out of this emotional space, one that I could engage with, I found Him challenging me anew from an unexpected direction.

The answer was in forgiveness.

Forgiving someone I have no relationship with, no personal ability to impact (at least humanly speaking) but who had a great deal of power over me and my life was a whole new level for me, but I knew it was the answer for my true freedom. And even as I was struggling with this challenge and my lack of desire to forgive, I had a vision.

Jesus, face filled with joy and perhaps some amusement, pointed to something I was clutching in my hand, holding tight to myself. It was like He was giving me a playful poke: “what’s that you’re holding?” Looking at what He was showing me, I saw a black sticky ball of muck. Straight away, I knew what it was. Bitterness. Anger. Resentment. Frustration. The question was obvious. “Do you want to hold on to all that muck?”

No!

I am well aware that forgiveness is often not easy. However,

If we refuse to release our anger, our bitterness, our hatred, our resentment, I would suggest forgiveness is impossible.

In fact, the picture I had would suggest lots of things are pretty difficult to do when we are clutching a bundle of blackness to ourselves, not to mention the way it contaminates everything we touch.

As I observe many interactions on social media filled with vitriol, anger, belittling and other negative output toward people who have different opinions on either side of what has become the “great divide” of beliefs about pretty much everything these days, I see that

forgiveness is vital to the way ahead.

But it is not easy.

In my own involvement in a reasonably low-level disagreement, I realised the exceptional power of the drive to justify and defend ourselves. To step back and not respond, and especially to choose not to escalate, is tough, especially when others respond with emotive and irrational accusations.

In my own reflections about how to forgive someone I believe to be in the wrong, I heard Jesus’ words echo down through the ages:

“Father, forgive them for they know not what they do”.

Jesus underwent arguably the most unjustified conviction, punishment and painful death, and yet, in the midst of it, He could forgive the perpetrators. How?

Lately, I have found myself reflecting on the idea of Creator God being the Righteous Judge. Too often, it seems we use this to claim His favour toward us, that He will back “me”, because I am in the right. We take our own beliefs, (generally well justified, even if only by ourselves and our support crew), about who or what is good or evil, right or wrong, and overlay them on “God the Judge” to prove that “I am right and you are wrong”.

A major problem with this is that I don’t see the line between good and evil are so much of God’s focus. I think the view He takes in His judgement, the main trajectory of His desire, is much more regarding whether our actions and beliefs lead to life, or lead us to death.

It reminds me of the situation of Joshua at Jericho (Joshua 5:13), where Joshua encounters the angel of the Lord and asks whose side the angel is on. The angel’s response: “No”. In other words, he was not on one side or the other. An article I read recently as I was looking deeper into the concept of “Yahweh Sabaoth” as the Lord of Hosts, suggested similarly to this:

God is not about being on my side or your side, but about fulfilling His plans.

Perhaps it is we who are either on His side or not and perhaps it is time we took ourselves off centre stage and put Him back on! (But that is for another discussion…)

Coming back to forgiveness, I am realising our difficulty with forgiving lies in our judgement. “But Lord, they are wrong and I have been wronged! I won’t let them get away with it! Can’t I at least justify myself, prove to them that I am right and they are wrong?” I see Him with His finger on the big red buzzer. BZZZZTT! Wrong answer!

Forgiveness means I have to lay down my right and desire for personal justice, for personal vindication and exoneration. Sometimes God may grant these to us. Often (in my experience), He doesn’t, at least not in the overt way we might like. In the end, we have to lay all this desire down and allow God to be Judge. Only He knows all the details, all the heart motivations, not to mention the future and how it all ties into His plans, so only He can judge perfectly.

While we hold on to our own judgements about situations and people, we effectively “throw a spanner in the works”, at the very least in our personal journey and connection into His plans. If we want to see His perfect judgement at work, we need to lay down our own judgement (remembering that it will be by the same standards we will be judged – see Matt 7:1,2), which means forgiving:

“Not mine to punish, Lord, not mine to convict, not mine to determine the outcome and direction. I TRUST YOU to be the Righteous Judge and bring about Your judgements and outcomes in Your timing to maximise LIFE and because it will bring about Your purposes, just at the right time.”

The real kicker is, though, this is not something we can simply give intellectual assent to and move on. Unless we do the actual work of forgiveness, speaking it out, we will remain stuck. It can be tough, it can take time, and it can be a very real battle with our emotions - often it is an act of our will well before our emotions come along with us. To be the true Body of Christ, to be His pure Bride, though, we must shift out of the mentality of division and breaking unity, of holding on to our need or desire to be right over relationship, or we will not be able to partake in all that He has for us. But more on that soon!

(And if this is something that you struggle with in how to process it all, or just want someone to walk the journey of forgiveness with, please don’t hesitate to contact me. It would be my privilege to walk with you on this.)