SET FREE IN 2016

“…I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark…” (Philippians 3:13-14)

During the war in Vietnam a Vietnamese woman was killed leaving behind her husband and her five year old baby. The husband traveled far and wide looking for work because he needed to provide for himself and his child. Often he would leave the small child with neighbors. After one long trip, the man returned to find his village demolished and deserted. He began franticly to searching through the rubble where his neighbors house had been and found scattered about some small bones. He was sure that these were the remains of his son. He took the small bones in his hands and held them to his chest and began to cry bitterly. After a while he wrapped the bones in his shirt and carried them with him everywhere he went.

Many years passed and one night as the man sat in his house he heard knocking on his door. He called out, “Who’s there?” “It is I your son!” the voice outside replied. “My kidnappers set me free and I have spent all these years trying to find you!” Trembling the man yelled back, “You are an impostor and a cruel person. Holding the small bones to his body as he began to weep he replied, my son is dead. Leave me alone, go away!” His son continued pounding on the door, but the man would not open the door.  After a while he stopped pounding on the door and left crying. The man never found happiness and he lost his son who was still alive. Why, because he was determined to hold on to the bones of the past.

We are at the start of a New Year. This is a great opportunity for letting go of the bones of the past. Someone once said that God created us with eyes in the front of our heads so that when we tried to look back we would get a stiff neck. The possibilities of the future call us to look forward. The good news for us at the beginning of this New Year is that God has set us free, free from the bones of the past.

Some people are stagnant because they remember and relive old and painful memoirs. They are stagnant and paralyzed by old bones. Life does what it's supposes to doing, and then we continue on. For some, 2015 was not such a good year. In spite of what happened to us last year, the beginning of a new year is a time to liberate ourselves of the past and begin anew. A new beginning is possible. 

Resolve to forget your defeats. For some their defeats are painful memoirs. Perhaps it is a memory of how you failed in a relationship. Perhaps you made a few bad decisions, or said and did a few incorrect things. What the Word of God is saying is that we must not allow the defeats of the past to paralyze us and stop us from advancing. It is a time to say “I am going to forget my past. I must be going stop torturing myself over what I did or what I didn’t do”. It is a time to stop being chained to my past defeats. God does not want that you live your life as a failure.

In this New Year commit yourself to leaving your grudges. What is a grudge? A grudge is a deep resentment that we cultivate in our heart against someone. A grudge is a spirit that will not forgive and leads to similar actions and attitudes. To harbor a grudge is to have a feeling of resentment against someone. Grudges are dangerous because they are destructive. Grudges can destroy marriages, families, ruin friendships and can divide churches. 

If today you hold a grudge against someone, God is telling you to let it go. Grudges are not only destructive, they are also self-destructive. When you keep a grudge against someone you are hurt yourself more than the person who you have the grudge against. If you keep on harboring a grudge, with time it will destroy you, if not physically, surely emotionally and spiritually. It will make you a bitter and angry person. Free yourself from your grudge, “forgiving on another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye” (Colossians 3:13). According to the Word of God the way of getting over a grudge is to forgive the offence.

God is not asking you to forget what was done to you. To pretend as nothing happened. What God is asking of you is to forgive the offence. What this implies is to admit that what was done was wrong and painful, but that you have decided to forgive the person who wronged you. I am sure that there is someone, who is reading this, who has to leave their grudges and forgive the offence that they have against someone. God is says to you today that this resentment that is deeply rooted in you has to go. What better time to make this difficult decision to forgive then the beginning of this New Year? Now don't say, "But, it is that you don't understand". The truth is that you don't want to forgive.

Resolve to restore your relationships. Whenever I start up my computer it runs a program that checks all my programs to see if they are all working correctly. God in His Word asks us to do something similar in our lives, that every now and then we should do a checkup of our personal relationships to see if they are working correctly. Listen to what the Word of God says: “If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men” (Romans 12:18). God is telling us that we must do everything that we can to restore our broken relationships.

Some of our relations might have been broken due to what others have done and they perhaps do not want to restore that relationship. God recognizes this. That's why; He starts by saying “If it is possible”. But some of our relationships have been broken due to what we have done. One of the things that you can do in this New Year is to admit your past errors and humbly seek the forgiveness of those that you have hurt. Make a commitment to restore your broken relationships in this New Year.

Make a commitment to turn your back on all your transgressions. After the Civil war was over and the slaves had been freed many of them decided to remain with their old masters and keep on doing what they told them. They were freed but they decided to continue living as slaves. This is exactly how some people have decided to live. Christ has made us free, but as those slaves some still decide to obey their old master, sin. Listen to these words in Romans 6:16: “Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey…”

Some people have some particular sins that they keep on committing. When we were saved we stop sinning, but there are other things that we know that are a sin that we still practice. Perhaps, this was the way you lived last year, constantly defeated by the same sin. Is your spiritual life stagnant because you have learned to live with a certain sin in your life? The Word of God challenges you to turn your back on that sin. It's time that this sin stops controlling your life. You don't have to live through this New Year being defeated by the same old sin. You can have the victory over it in this New Year.

Will this New Year 2016 be just another year for you, or will you make these changes and make it a year that changes your life. The Word of God tells us; "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me" (Philippians 4 13).