Hope for the New Year

27 Dec Hope for the New Year

2023 is going to be a challenging year.

There’s no escaping it, so there’s no use denying it. One of the great needs of life is to be in touch with reality.

So, what do we do about the challenges ahead in the New Year of 2023?

Two things, I think:

1. Fight for the temporal.
2. Put hope in the eternal.

Let’s look at those two.

Fight for the temporal

Evil has been unleashed in our country that, not only has never been seen before but, could not even be imagined before. The whole world, the Bible says, lies in the power of the evil one (1 John 5:19). Satan, the god of this world, has blinded the minds of unbelievers (2 Corinthians 4:4), and has deceived them into thinking wrong is right, false is true and bad is good. This has escalated to inconceivable levels today.

 In Romans 1:18-32, we see this progression:

• People suppress the truth in unrighteousness
• Their heart becomes darkened
• They are given over to a depraved mind
• They become inventors of evil

This is what is happening in the United States (and really, all over the world). This is not a battle that we can win. This is a battle that only God can win.

If God chooses to win it, it will be in response to Christians’ prayer and our turning to him in spiritual integrity. Colossians 3: 1 – 2 says, “If then you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”

I have hope that God will still deliver us. There is an appalling amount of “world” that has seeped into the church, especially the organized church. But there is a heartening amount of righteousness in the Church at large (the universal Church) that has risen up in never-before-seen ways to combat evil.

Yet, while I have hope that God will deliver us, His deliverances are rarely tidy. When God sent Moses to deliver the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, Pharaoh reacted badly and things got worse. Then, after God’s mighty hand worked through the ten plagues, Pharaoh let the Israelites go. But he regretted it later and came after them. God opened the Red Sea for the Israelites to cross over, and then swallowed the Egyptians when they tried it. But after that spectacular deliverance, they ran out of food. So God gave them food. Then they ran out of water. So, God gave them water. Then the Amalekites attacked them. So, God fought for them. It was one thing after another. One step forward, two steps back (it seemed). But in the process, God was delivering them, and eventually did deliver them.

If he delivers the United States, it is not going to be tidy. It’s already too late for that. But in my assessment, it is too soon to stop praying, it is too soon to stop fighting, it is too soon to stop hoping and encouraging one another.

 Put hope in the eternal

In World War II, there was a song, “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition.” It melds, with poetic license, the idea of working hard while trusting the Lord. It captures a healthy balance similar, in principle, to the idea of fighting for the temporal while putting our hope in the eternal.

While we pray, while we turn from sin to righteousness, while we resist the evil rising up against us, we maintain an eternal perspective, and we put our hope in the future of eternity when all will be well.

We accept that life will be filled with trials, so we face them as God instructs us: “Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” We use the trials to draw us closer to God, rather than driving us farther from him.

And we go look to the future when, the Bible tells us, all will be well. Revelation 24:4 says, “he will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain…” We borrow that reality and bring it back into the present to give us strength and hope.

C.S. Lewis wrote, “A continual looking forward to the eternal world is not (as some modern people think) a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do. It does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it is. If you read history, you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next.”

Let’s nurture hope for the year ahead. For the New Year, let’s be like those Christians that Lewis was talking about. Let’s do the most for the present world because we are thinking most of the next.

Help for the fight and for maintaining hope

Do you happen to be struggling with the demands of life right now? Are you dealing with anxiety or discouragement, or perhaps having difficulty finding the resolve to carry on at a high enough level? If so, you are not alone. These are challenging times which are demanding more from Christians than when in easier times.

A little over ten years ago, I was going through a personal crisis and began dealing with great anxiety. In working through that extremely difficult time, I developed a system for the “renewing of my mind” commanded in Romans 12: 1-2 that delivered me from that anxiety and put me on a path of mental renewal and spiritual transformation on a level I had not experienced in my previous decades of being a Christian.

Over the last three or four years I have been working on making that system available for others and I would like to tell you about it. It is a resource that has the potential to transform your ability to live the Christian life on the level you long for.

You see, the Christian life is built on knowledge (You shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free.  John 8:332). You can’t believe something until you know it, you won’t live it until you believe it, and you won’t be happy (have joy) until you live it.

But knowledge isn’t everything. We all know things that haven’t changed us. They’ve gone in one ear and out the other.

That’s because it takes a different strategy than just merely hearing a truth one time to transform that knowledge into life change. If something is important, you have to repeat it until it changes you. If you’ve been around here for awhile, you’ve heard me say repeatedly that: Repetition is the key to mental ownership.

In order to help Christians with that process, I have created a Bible-based mental renewal system, The Change Zone, to help motivated Christians renew their mind and transform their life. I have been using this system for over ten years and it has made a striking difference in my life.

It is like nothing you have ever seen. It’s disruptive innovation, providing a resource we’ve never had before to fight spiritual battles we’ve never fought before. It is specifically designed to provide information, strategies and resources to help motivated Christians renew their mind and transform their lives.

I encourage you to take a serious look at The Change Zone as a resource to help you in the challenging New Year and beyond. Make 2023 the year you dive deeper into spiritual transformation! Enrollment closes midnight December 31, 2022 and won’t reopen for new members until later this Spring 2023. So I encourage you to take a look and join me in The Change Zone today. You have so MUCH to gain and so LITTLE to lose.

If you know anyone who you think might enjoy this blog, please forward it to them and encourage them to go to www.maxanders.com and sign up for the free video, “Master the Bible So Well That the Bible Masters You”, available there on the home page. This will put them on my regular mailing list and they’ll receive my weekly blog.

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