It is New Year's Eve, 26 minutes till the end of the year. I'm in my pj's watching CNN's Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffin (who is she, anyway) waiting for the ball to drop in NYC's Time Square, contemplating what the future might hold for a 53 yea old, retired, white woman. I am not working. My daughter is grown and has her own family and her own life (as it should be.) I asked myself: What do I want? I know I want to do something new. I know I want to do something besides worry about my mortgage payment. But, what is it I want to accomplish in the new year. And then I noticed, even as I'm writing this, that there are a lot of "'I's" in this story. Then it dawned on me. Maybe I'm asking the wrong question. Maybe the question should be; what does God want for me in this coming year. And suddenly peace came over me.
It is time to step out in faith and try the new thing. Remember in the Bible when God told Abram (later Abraham): Go for yourself [for your own advantage] away from your country, from your relatives and your father's house, to the land that I will show you...and I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you with abundant increase of favors and make your name famous and distinguished, and you will be a blessing [dispensing good to others] Gen.12 1,2; and in Gen. 12:4 (just two verses up) it says...So Abram departed. He just left. He immediatly obeyed God. He didn't ask his relatives what they thought; he didn't confer with his neighbors. He obeyed God and left. Now, I know God made him a lot of promises. But this guy had faith, real faith. He didn't just believe, he was convinced. It required a radical act of obedience to step out in faith, not knowing where God was leading him, leaving everyone and everthing he had ever known behind. He trusted God, so he obeyed, end of story. And so God always said of Abraham, that his faith was accounted to him as righteousness. And because faith results in obedience and obedience results in blessing. Abraham became a very great man. If you truly believe the promises of God (also known as faith), then you will obey God when He calls you out from your comfort zone. Like when the Angel of the Lord called out to Abraham from heaven, in Gen. 22:11 and says. Abraham, Abraham! And without hesitation Abraham answers, Here I am.
THE NARROW PATH by J.Roberts. There is a way that seems right to a man and appears straight before him, but at the end of it is death. (Proverbs 14:12). Enter through the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the path that leads to destruction, and many are those who are entering through it. But the gate is narrow and the path is straightened and compressed that leads away to life and few are those who find it. (Matthew 7:13,14) AMP.
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