Have You Laid Your Foundation For The New Year?

As we approach the coming year, some of us excited, some road weary, some of us hurting- hoping that the coming year will be easier. Some of us perhaps a little apprehensive, some us ready to dig in, go further, meet those goals. We stand in a place no one has walked before, ready to journey into uncharted places. None of us know what the future holds, what joys, what heartaches, none but Him that is.

We have the unique opportunity to set the foundations for this year, not just resolutions that we'll keep for a week- maybe, but deeper than that. We can choose, to leave the baggage we've dragged around for the last twelve months right here and step into the new year free. What have you been carrying around, that you need to surrender to Him? What lies have you been claiming, instead of His truth? That you're unlovable? He doesn't care? He doesn't see? That there isn't a reason you were placed on this earth? Perhaps you doubt your worth. Perhaps like George Bailey in It's A Wonderful Life, you can no longer see all the lives you've touched. All the good you've done. 

Are you clinging to a dead, or dying relationship? Trying to breathe life back into it, when only He can? Are you trying to step into His role to bring back the wayward child?

You have the power to step up to the cross and nail those things, that have been weighing you down, pulling you under, stealing your joy. You have the power to bring them all to His feet and say "I can't do this. I can't carry these things, it's too heavy. It's too great. Only you can fix this," You were never meant to carry these things, and He stands ready and willing with open arms to take them. But you must decide to surrender them.

It's become so natural, to cling to those things. To let them fester. To steal the pen and try to write the story, to make sense of all the pieces- but we can't. We can't see all the pieces, just the little place where we're standing. He is the only one who can fix this, He's the only one who can make sense of it. He's the only mighty enough to take that pen write our story. It's not easy, to bring our heavy burdens before Him and drop them at His feet as an offering. But it's even harder not to run back and pick them back up because they've become comfortable. 

We can choose, to leave these things nailed to the cross and enter the new year free, and unhindered. We can lay this foundation, one stone at a time. Those things that weighed us down, we can lay them down one stone at a time. We don't have to understand the "why" or the "how" that has haunted us, we don't have to listen to the "what if" that plague us. We can give them to Him, write His name across them and nail to the cross. Lay them as the foundation. 

God, I choose to give this to you and not pick it back up. The things that have hurt me, the things that steal my joy, these lies that I have believed I choose to give them to you and in there place I'll cling to you. I'll claim your truth, I'll claim what you say about me, I am treasured, I have a purpose. I am loved beyond measure. There is no place that I can go that you are not with me. No relationship is too dead, or too broken that you can't heal. There is no hardened place in my heart that you can not replace with a heart of flesh. No child is too far gone that you in all mercy and love can not seek out and bring them home. 

What will be your foundation this year, will you cling to the things that you drug about this year? Or will you cut the ties that bind you to those things and lay them at the foot of the cross? Only He can fix what is broken in your life. Only He can restore what has been lost. Only He can breathe new life into what has been dead. But you must decide to let calvary cover it, or to keep on dragging. He's already died for those things, let them go and let Him cover them and step into the new year, fresh, unburdened and ready for whatever He has planned for you.

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