Power for Living: New Year Special Edition

Power for Living: New Year Special Edition, 2025

The New Year: Opportunity for a New Beginning

Study Text: Philippians 3:13 - 14

Introduction:

Anytime a new year is beginning, it is an opportunity to prepare for a new beginning in all areas of your life.

The New Year is not a repetition of the concluding year, but a beginning of a fresh year. Therefore, you should not hope to begin again, but to have a new beginning.

This can happen as you do a critical review of the concluding year and to trust God for a fresh start to achieve a greater glory.

The Holy Spirit will  want to offer to you a way of starting the New Year in a way which will significantly change your life for better.

There are commitments expected of you by the Word of God that will guarantee that you will have a glorious and successful New Year.

1.  Be Committed to Put your Failure and Setback behind 

This advice from God’s Word has stood the test of time. We don't have to live our lives imprisoned by our past.

All of us have failed in some way in our lives over the last year.

Probably we won’t see our failures recorded for history on News Papers,  but they are recorded in our hearts and minds.

For many of us our failures are painful memories, such as failure in relationship, in family matters, in business and careers and so on.

You made the wrong decisions, said and did the wrong things and that led to the failure.

Some of you who are parents probably know that you failed your children in some way, some of you children are aware that you have failed your parents. It is more likely that many of us know that we have failed ourselves in some ways.

And all of us should know that in some way we have failed God.

What God’s Word is saying to us here is that we must not allow ourselves to be held down by our past failures.

That we have not got to dwell on our past so much that it stops us from moving forward into the future that God has for us.  The start of the New Year is a good time for us to rise to that challenge with the help of God.

You need to stop living in regrets and to stop torturing yourself about what you did or didn’t do.

This New Year is a good time to stop being chained to our past failures. God is saying here in His Word that he doesn’t want you to go through your life branding yourself as a failure.

2.  Be Committed to Give up your Grudges and Forgive others 

In Colossians 3:13, we are instructed that even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye.

God in those words is challenging us directly and personally to give up our grudges. That is what He means when He says forgive each other whatever quarrels you may have against one another.

A grudge is a deep ongoing resentment that we cultivate in our hearts against someone else. It is an unforgiving spirit that leads to unforgiving attitudes and unforgiving actions.

Harbouring a grudge is about nursing a dislike for someone.

What you need to know is that grudges are dangerous because they are destructive.

Grudges destroy marriages. Grudges break up families.

Grudges ruin friendships. 

Grudges split churches. One of the problems of the Church in general is the grudges that Christians hold against one another.

Grudges are not just destructive they are also self-destructive. When you hold a grudge against someone you will hurt yourself as much and perhaps more than you will hurt the person you are holding it against.

Make no mistake about it, if you keep harbouring a grudge then it will eventually destroy you, if not physically, certainly emotionally and spiritually. It will make you a bitter and twisted person.

Give up your grudges,

forgive each other whatever you may have against one another. According to God’s Word, the way to give up a grudge is to forgive.

He isn’t asking you to ignore whatever the person has done to you. He isn’t asking you to pretend it did happen. He doesn’t ask you to condone it, to pretend it didn’t matter.

What God asks you to do is to forgive the grievance. That means to acknowledge how wrong and painful what was done to you was, but to decide to forgive person who did the wrong to you.

What better time to make that difficult decision to forgive than the start of a new year?

3.  Be Committed to Restore your Relationships

God in His word issues an invitation to check whether our personal relationships are working properly. 

Romans 12:18

The important phrase there is, as much as it lieth in you. God by using that phrase is personally challenging each one of us to do all we can to restore our relationships.

The Lord wants us to do everything we can to restore any relationships that may have gone wrong in our lives.

 God’s word is saying if you have caused a rift in a relationship then you have a responsibility to do everything you can to restore it.

That everything includes the one thing we all probably find most difficult, asking for forgiveness.

Many relationships are not all they should be or could be simply because someone won’t say: "I am sorry, please forgive me”.

Maybe God is saying to some of you that this change of year is the right time to restore the relationships you have ruined,  by going and sincerely saying that you are sorry for those angry words or those selfish and unthoughtful actions.

Make no mistake it will be hard to do but one of the most significant things that you can do to mark the New Year is to admit your past errors in relationships and humbly seek forgiveness from the one you have hurt.

 4.  Be Committed to Turn from your Sins and Turn to God.

Christ died to set us free, the Holy Spirit has given us the power to be free, but many Christians still choose to obey their old master, sin.

Romans 6:12

When God says for us to not let sin control the way we live and to not give in to its lustful desires,  He is issuing the challenge to turn our backs on our transgressions.

For most of us when we are saved we give up certain sins easily, but there are other things that we know are wrong that we really battle with. Those are our besetting sins.

Many of us end up choosing to give into our besetting sins and end up living double lives.

Maybe that is how you lived over the last year, constantly defeated by the same old sin.  Is your spiritual life crippled because you have learned to live with a besetting sin?

Do you have a quick temper that you constantly give into?Or a tongue that loves to assassinate other people’s characters or wound their feelings?Is there some other sin that you keep on giving in to?

God here in his word challenges us to turn our back on that sin whatever it is. To stop letting it control the way we live. He wants you to stop obeying your old master.

Let’s be clear about this: Jesus death broke the power of sin, and the Holy Spirit can give us the power to resist sin. That means that we don’t have to go into this New Year still being defeated by the same old sin. You can have the victory over it.

God says you are no longer a slave to sin so don’t live like one or act like one. If you will ask for God’s forgiveness for your sin and his power to resist that sin then this New Year can be for you not just a new era in history but a new era in your spiritual life.

Conclusion:

Will this New Year be just a calendar changing event for you, or are you willing to rise to these challenges from God’s word and make these commitments and make it a life changing event?

This New Year will really be something to celebrate if you’ll make forgiveness the heart of what it’s all about for you. Have the courage right here today

i. To forgive yourself and “forget the past”

ii.  To forgive others who have hurt you “and forgive whatever grievances you have”

iii.  To ask for forgiveness from those you have hurt and “as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone”

iv. To ask for God’s forgiveness and “No longer be a slave to sin”

Prayers:

1.  Almighty God, thank you for the gift of a New Year, the gift of life and the gift of health.

2.  Our heavenly Father, grant me grace through the Lord Jesus Christ to make all necessary commitments this Year to have a glorious New Beginning in Jesus name.

Thanks so much for going through this article Power for Living.

It is a weekly publication of Ultimate Power Gospel Assembly, Nigeria.

For Prayers and Counseling, contact:

Bishop Prof. Julius O. Soyinka,

juliussoyinka@outlook.com

+2348035822785