Starting the New Year from the Beginning

Discipline, accountability, regiments, resolutions, good intentions, and wishful thinking are things we all have in varying degrees now and again. They help us in everything from diets and exercise to volunteering our services in our communities and reading our Bible. Most of the time it’s easy to have the good intentions and wishful thinking but we’re a little more reserved when it comes to things like discipline and accountability. I agree with the writer John Eldredge who said that the way we use accountability makes him feel like he’s expected to fail.

Of course we’re all going to fail now and again; we’re human. Finger pointing and judging only lead to negative responses from those being targeted and easily removes the individual’s drive and desire to succeed at whatever it is we want to get to. Remember the saying, “People in glass houses shouldn’t throw rocks?” I believe it’s referring to the fact that whatever goes around comes around! Even the comedian Steve Smith says, “We’re all in this together!”

So, it still doesn’t change the fact that discipline, accountability, regiments, resolutions, and such are a part of our lives. We just have to use them in positive, life giving, and confidence building ways.

The Lord spoke through the prophet Isaiah saying, “Remember the former things long past, for I am God, and there is no other, I am God, and there is no one like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things which have not been done, saying, ‘My purpose will be established.’” (Isaiah 46:9-10 NASB)

I see a thread that God wants us to discover and follow as He “declares the end from the beginning’ and to anticipate what the future holds by gaining understanding of what He has said already. To do this we have to be in the Bible. We have to know what He’s been up to. We have to connect the dots with this thread God has set from the beginning tying together all of history until the end of time as we know it. But it’s hard. How many times have many of us started to read the Bible all the way through only to get sidetracked by busy schedules or the book of Leviticus? We need help, not pressure!

Branches Church is starting the year 2012 at the beginning! Anyone who wishes can participate in the fifteen minute daily and weekly chronological readings through the entire Bible cover to cover. We will share the discoveries and the thread that connects the dots showing God’s purposes on Sunday mornings.

Call it accountability, discipline, a regiment, a resolution, good intentions, or just wishful thinking, but it is exciting to open the book, read what God is doing in the lives of people, and connect the dots of God’s purposes to our own daily lives.