We often look forward to a new year, with all sorts of well intentioned ‘resolutions’.
But perhaps we don’t take enough time, in our busy lives, to look back. Amidst all the activity of the Christmas season this month, it might be very beneficial, spiritually, to reflect on 2013 and set aside some quiet moments to consider God’s dealings with us this past year.
Looking back is often encouraged in the Bible for God’s people, because it generates thanksgiving. ‘Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits’ (Psalm 103.2). Remembering how God has blessed us leads us to bless him, in praise and whole-life worship. It is a valuable exercise, because we forget very easily and the busier we are, the more likely we are to rush from one thing to the next, without focussing on how gracious and faithful God has proved himself to be to us. The old refrain runs, ‘Count your blessings; name them one by one. And it will surprise you what the Lord has done.’
Crowned with love & compassion
So, what has the Lord done for you in this year that is ending? The Psalmist gives us some great starters. He ‘forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases; he redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion; he satisfies your desires with good things’ (Psalm 103.3-5).
These are among the great spiritual blessings which God has poured upon us, in the Lord Jesus, and we should rightly take time to thank him for them. There is a real danger that we become over familiar with our family birthright and start to take the amazing grace of God for granted.
Fighting spiritual drift
There are two key ways to guard against this spiritual drift. One is to remember what it cost the Lord of glory to accomplish our salvation on the cross. Go back and read one of the gospel accounts of the crucifixion and realise again what our sin did to that innocent baby of Bethlehem. Then think of the unimaginable love and mercy that lie behind his self-emptying sacrifice.
The second is to remember where we were when he found us — lost in sin, alienated from God, all our imagined righteousness like filthy rags. It is always healthy to look back and recall the process by which God’s Spirit brought us to hear the good news, opened the eyes of our understanding and granted us the gifts of repentance and faith. Then we can recapture the awe of Paul’s simple but profound testimony. ‘The Son of God loved me and gave himself for me’ (Galatians 2.20).
Praise him for our joys & sorrows
Next, look back over the circumstances and the events of this past year. There will doubtless be a variety of memories, coloured by an equal range of emotional responses. Some will fill us with joy; others we want to eradicate from our memories. But all of them need to be connected intentionally to our relationship with our loving heavenly Father. Our joy naturally gives rise to praise and thanksgiving, but what about our sorrows, our unanswered questions, our perplexities and fears? Praise stimulates faith. If God has done all this for me and if I know his character to be unfailing steadfast love, for which I give him great thanks, then I will trust him for what I cannot see, both in the present and in the totally unknown circumstances of the future. Faith stimulates prayer.
Faith for the future
After Israel’s experience of God routing their Philistine enemies at Mizpah, Samuel set up a memorial stone, as a constant reminder of what the Lord had done for them. He called it the ‘stone of help’ (Ebenezer), saying ‘thus far has the Lord helped us’ (1Samuel 7.12). This was not nostalgia or mere heritage appreciation. This was to generate faith for the future. In John Newton’s words, ‘His love in times past forbids me to think He’ll leave me at last in trouble to sink’. It is as we look back in thanksgiving that our faith is strengthened and renewed for whatever the future may bring. And that is because it is not the future bringing it, as though the universe were governed by some impersonal mechanism of fate. It is God who brings the future and, with it, all the plans and purposes of his good, pleasing and perfect will, bespoke in every last detail, for the benefit and blessing of each individual member of his flock.
That is why ‘Happy New Year’ is not a vacuous, make-believe wish on the lips of real believers. Our heavenly Father could not possibly love us more than he does and he will never love us less, through every moment of every day of the coming year. Look back with thanksgiving and you will look forward with confidence and joy.
