A New Year's Devotional

A New Year’s Devotional
By Christian Author Linda Wiggins-Edwards


Do you know what God has in store for you this coming year? Do you care what God has in store for you? Some people go year after year never knowing what God’s purpose is for their lives. Some people never know what it means to have God’s will be your will, or what it means to walk in God’s light. I used to be one of those people. I used to go year after year, making New Year’s resolutions that I could never seem to stick to, and making people promises that I never seemed to keep. And thinking to myself, “Why isn’t my life the way that I want it to be? What am I doing wrong?”

Well, it took a lot of soul-searching, a lot of tears, and a lot of cries for help, for me to finally realize exactly what it was that I was doing wrong. The problem was not that I couldn’t stick to a resolution, or that I couldn’t keep a promise. The problem was that I had not turned my life over to God. I was trying to do things in my own strength, in my own knowledge, and in my own time, instead of in God’s strength, God’s knowledge and God’s time. I was trying to do things the way I wanted to do them, and then call on God only when I needed His help to accomplish them, so long as He did things the way I wanted them done, without even acknowledging that what I wanted for my life may not be what God wanted for my life. It seems that the hardest thing for people to do sometimes is to align their will with God’s will, to be obedient to Him and live their life according to His purpose.

Unfortunately I was one of those people that had to figure all of this out the hard way. It took over 40 years, but I am finally on the path to understanding what God’s will is for my life, and I am finally working towards aligning my will with His. In those 40+ years, I have since learned to ask God to make me over into the Christian that He wants and needs me to be, and I ask Him to continue to lead me on my spiritual journey, to lead me on my path to righteousness, to increase my faith, to work in and through my life, and to use me in a way that will not only bless His Spirit and glorify His name, but to also use me to be a blessing to others the way He has been a blessing to me.

So, needless to say, I no longer make New Year’s Resolutions. I’ve stopped making promises to people that I can’t keep, and I’ve started making promises to God instead. I’ve promised Him that I will do whatever He needs me to do, to reach out to whomever He needs me to reach, in order that He might use me to get His message out to a world that so desperately needs to know Him better, a world that needs to know that He is still a living God, that He is still at work in people’s lives, that He still loves us and most of all that He is still God.

So today I ask you again, do you care what God has in store for you this coming year? I’m sure you do, so this year, just allow God to have total control over your life. Allow him to mold you, to transform you, to make you over into a better Christian, and to continue to lead you on your spiritual journey, so that you may get to know His heart and His will better. Turn your life over to God and be sure to seek Him first in anything and everything that you do. Just as it says in Psalm 105:3-5, “Glory in his holy name; let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice. Look to the Lord and his strength; seek his face always. Remember the wonders he has done, his miracles, and the judgments he pronounced…” And be sure to always be thankful for all that He is and all that He has done.


Written by Linda Wiggins-Edwards
Copyright 2010. All rights reserved.