ERICA DUNOMES

Are you a person who dreads facing the start of every new year? Does the thought of entering another year not having fulfilled any dreams or reached any goals leave you with feelings of regret? Friend, I’ve come to bring you hope. Here are two things that God wants you to know in 2023.

God is a communicating God. He always has a word for His people. Having a right relationship with Him, gives us full access to everything He will ever want us to know. We just have to make sure that we are reading and studying the Bible (His Word) and keeping our hearts in proper position to receive and hear from Him.

If I haven’t said this already, HAPPY NEW YEAR to you! If you are reading this post that I have typed, then let us both take a moment to praise our faithful God. We made it! So, here’s the first thing God wants you to know.

1. He has given you a clean slate and a fresh start.

I asked the question earlier if you were a person who always dreads the start of every new year? If you answered, “Yes,” trust me I totally understand. The thought of having gone through another year with unfulfilled dreams and goals just doesn’t put too much excitement in it for you does it? You don’t even get your hopes up that this year will be any different, right? I…get….you. But to look at the new year this way is to look at it all wrong. There’s a huge key word that you’re overlooking…NEW.

2023 is a NEW year! Realize what that means for you. It means that this year has come and presented itself before you for the first time. It’s a way that you have not gone before. A path that you have not yet walked. You’ve not yet had the chance to mess up any part of it. It also means that whatever you did/didn’t do in 2022 does not even matter anymore. Everything about last year has now become a former thing. You can’t add to it. And you certainly can’t take away from it.

Let these verses of Scripture be God’s confirmation concerning 2022:

Do not remember the former things, Nor consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing, Now it shall spring forth; Shall you not know it? I will even make a road in the wilderness And rivers in the desert. ~Isaiah‬ ‭43‬:‭18‬-‭19‬ ‭NKJV‬‬

Sis, it’s time to let 2022 go. God is looking to do something new for you. Your slate has been made clean and your start has been made fresh. He wants you to let go of the things of the past to focus on the new thing He wants to do for you. In you. Through you. With you.

There’s always a bigger picture that must be considered. 2023 is giving you that chance.

2. He is looking for you to give Him your “Yes.”

God has a reason for everything He does. When He brought the children of Israel out of Egypt, He did something new (a word you’re going to come across quite a bit in this post). Instead of God bringing the children of Israel out of Egypt and still providing for them what they were used to, He gave them what they weren’t used to. One example is that, instead of feeding them pots of meat that they had been used to in Egypt, which He very well could have done, He decided to feed them manna. His reason for doing this? He wanted to humble them and test them.

“And you shall remember that the Lord your God led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you and test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. So He humbled you, allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna which you did not know nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord.” ~Deuteronomy‬ ‭8‬:‭2‬-‭3‬ ‭NKJV‬‬

Let me provide you a bit of a paraphrased backdrop of the story. The children of Israel had become slaves in Egypt and the Egyptians purposefully made their conditions hard. They cried out to God for deliverance. God heard them and He answered them. He sent His servant Moses to bring them out. He then led them into the wilderness to test them and make them ready for where they were headed.

Through Moses, God made known to the children of Israel what He had planned to do and where He had planned to take them. All that God wanted from them was a simple, “Yes” in cooperation. And He wanted them to live it out with their lives. However, instead of God getting a yes, He got murmuring and complaining. It had gotten so bad that instead of them walking into what God had for them, they ended up dying where they were. Their children went in instead. The journey through the wilderness that should have taken them eleven days ended up taking forty years. Wow! Imagine how much different things would have been if only they’d have given God their yes.

History continues to repeat itself.

Just as God wanted a yes from the children of Israel, He wants the same from you today. With every coming new year comes new seasons as well as new opportunities. All of this involves decision making. And this decision making leads us to give our consent or to not give our consent. We either decide that we are going to say Yes to something or we decide that we are going to say No to something. We also may have to let go of something to take on something else. Discernment and following the leading of the Holy Spirit is majorly important concerning this.

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace. 
~Ecclesiastes‬ ‭3‬:‭1‬-‭8‬ ‭KJV‬‬

Did you know that God has placed a “Yes” in your spirit? And guess what? His desire is to have it. Now that your slate is clean and your start is made fresh, He’s looking for you to partner with Him to help bring to pass everything He’s looking to do in, through, and for your life.

So, now I have a series of questions for you:

• Has God been speaking this to your spirit already? Then I pray that this post serves as a confirmation unto that you need not ignore the voice of the Lord. Go deeper. Seek Him further for what He desires next of you.

• Do you feel like you have been wandering in the wilderness? If so, then calculate how long you believe you’ve been there. Now decide how much longer you want to stay stuck there before you decide to finally come out. Remember, the journey for the children of Israel should have only been eleven days. It lasted 40 years.

• What’s holding you back from telling God yes? What can’t you let go of? What struggles? What fears? What man-made items? Whatever it is or whatever they are, God considers those things to be idols in your life; worthless things that He does not want you putting above Him. Become determined to remove these things out of God’s way.

The choice is yours.

Picture this! Take a moment to imagine with me. Look carefully at the photo above. Imagine that you’re standing in front of Jesus holding your past in front of you and refusing to let it go. At the same time, Jesus is standing in front of you holding your future behind Him. His hand is out for you to give Him your past in exchange that He will give you a better future. Picture that this is what looking at the year 2023 is like.

Friend, what ever will you do? Will you say “yes” to God?