Are You Looking Forward to the New Year? | Proverbs 3:5-6
Did you have certain expectations for 2020 that just didn’t turn out? Did you have goals, vacations, successes you wanted to accomplish, but weren’t able to? We often romanticize our expectations. The year 2020 has a nice round number to it. It seemed like a year with so much promise, but it was rife with challenges, cancelations, and even death.
If you are looking forward to saying good-bye to the year 2020 and moving on to 2021, I’d like to suggest a better question to ask yourself. What did you learn from 2020? Yes, I am saying that there are lessons that you can take from 2020 into the new year. Here are some things that I learned from 2020.
Even though 2020 had many challenges, God was still present. We know from His Word that even in the will of God, there may be challenges. God did not promise that things would always go the way we want them to, but He did promise His presence. It’s easy to trust God when life is going well, but when our comfort is stripped away, we need to ask ourselves if we are still trusting God.
We can hope that 2021 will be better and we can look back and see what we were focusing on in 2020. I know that I wasn’t always trusting in God when things were going well. I trusted my work, my paycheck, and my own way of living life. When those things were gone, there wasn’t anything to lean on. But God was still there.
Proverbs 3:5-6 says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.”
Let’s break down this verse:
Trust means we put all of our weight into something. If we put all of our weight into a chair, we are trusting that chair to hold us up. We can put all of our trust in God. Why? He says we can.
All means that we are trusting with everything we have. All of our heart is to trust with all of who we are.
Do not lean on your own understanding means we properly place our understanding under God’s understanding. God thinks differently than we do because He knows all things, therefore His understanding is much better than ours. This is also the reason we can trust God.
Romans 11:33-36 says a lot about how God is way bigger than we are. We must evaluate if we are worshipping a god in our own image or are we worshipping THE God?
It’s not about the size of our faith, but the size of our God https://proclaimministries.com/devotional?sapurl=LytyeWR0L2xiL21pLytzNGd3YzZxP2JyYW5kaW5nPXRydWUmZW1iZWQ9dHJ1ZQ==
In all your ways acknowledge him means we seek God. God wants and deserves more acknowledgment from us. To acknowledge God in all our ways is to submit to Him. It is an intimate knowledge of Him. We must acknowledge that He is the creator of the universe. He is King. The best way to walk with the Lord is to be in His presence. Pray and seek a relationship with God and you will be in His presence.
He will make straight your paths means we can be in God’s will, but it doesn’t mean there won’t be any problems in life. We can be in the will of God despite challenges that come our way. We can experience challenges and continue to trust God.
Life may still be very challenging as we move from 2020 to 2021. Remember God is always with us. As we seek Him we will experience His presence in our lives. Let’s thank God for 2020 and the lessons we have learned.
If you want to find out more about what Mister Brown and Andrea Brown think about the year 2020, go to LifeWithTheBrowns.com. https://www.lifewiththebrowns.com/blog/what-theme-would-you-give-the-year-2020
As we move into 2021, do you want to Get Wisdom? The new year is a great time to check out our most popular series called Get Wisdom https://proclaimministries.com/teaching?sapurl=LytyeWR0L2xiL21zLytqYmY5bXB4P2JyYW5kaW5nPXRydWUmZW1iZWQ9dHJ1ZQ==
We’d love to hear from you. What did you learn from 2020? What do you need to trust God with as you move into 2021?
“Helping you connect faith and life.”