The God of New Beginnings
The God of New Beginnings
Rev. Tony Cooke
Lamentations 3:22-23
22 Through the LORD’s mercies we are not consumed, Because His compassions fail not.
23 They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness.
This is a beautiful way of saying that God is ever ready to forgive, to restore, and to renew.
He is ever ready to give new beginnings, yet so many seem hindered by their past.
You may have seen people who are stuck, frozen in time, and never progressing
Their identity seems to be locked into past failures and past disappointments, while old attitudes, old mentalities, and old patterns continue to prevail in their lives.
People who were raised in negative, critical homes must overcome that influence.
Saul, the first king of Israel had to address small thinking that would have hindered his progress. Consider Saul’s response when Samuel began to prepare him for stepping into something bigger than he’d ever experienced:
1 Samuel 9:21
21 And Saul answered and said,"Am I not a Benjamite, of the smallest of the tribes of Israel, and my family the least of all the families of the tribe of Benjamin? Why then do you speak like this to me?"
In his book, The Five Love Languages, Gary Chapman said: "I am amazed by how many individuals mess up every new day with yesterday. They insist on bringing into today the failures of yesterday and in doing so pollute a potentially wonderful day."
What do you carry from day to day that hinders you from moving forward?
* Guilt?
* A sense of failure?
* A sense of damaged identity?
* Perceiving yourself as inferior? A second-class Christian?
* The fear of people?
* A fear of rejection?
God does not want these things – and they are rooted in past experiences – lording over you…
…Restricting you
…Binding you
…Limiting you
Some people think the only way to experience change is externally.
They will say:
"If I only had a new spouse…"
"If I only had a new job…:
"If I only lived somewhere else…"
You can change all these and still be miserable unless you get renewed on the inside.
God’s mercies are new every morning.
God’s compassions are new every morning.
God’s faithfulness is new every morning.
The life God has given us is an adventure, a journey, a race
He didn’t say He’d be with us until things get rough.
He didn’t say He’d be with us until we missed it.
He said He’d be with us always – even to the end of the age!
The problem is not God abandoning us.
The problem is us failing to access, failing to take advantage of, and failing to release our faith in…
* God’s everlasting mercies
* His unfailing and always new compassions
* His faithfulness
I want to talk today about a few people who had to access God’s mercy in order to put the past behind them – in doing so, they truly met the God of new beginnings!
Some people mistakenly think the great men of the Bible were men who never fell, when in fact, they were simply men who knew how to get up and keep on going.
Before I talk about Bible characters…
SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL was at the bottom of his class all the way through high school, and his teachers didn’t consider him good enough in math to enter Woolwich, the military academy for cadets seeking commissions in the Royal Army. Instead, they encouraged him to apply to Sandhurst, the academy that catered to Cavalry and Infantry men. He flunked the entrance exam twice. He passed on his third try but didn’t score high enough for a place in the Infantry. This "under achiever" went on to hold the supreme military command as prime minister and minister of defense in Britain’s World War II effort. His life and career became synonymous with Britain’s story and its survival.
ALBERT EINSTEIN passed the entrance exam to the Federal Polytechnic College in Zurich, Switzerland on his second attempt.
THE RED BARON crashed on his first solo flight. Two weeks later he took the first test required for a pilot’s certificate and flunked. Deteremined, however, he continued training until he passed and was assigned to combat. Over the next 10 years, the World War II German flying ace downed 80 Allied planes in dogfights.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN’s mother died when he was nine years of age. At 23, he invested in a small store. Three years later his business partner died, leaving him in debt for years to come. At 37, on his third try, he was finally elected to Congress. He ran again two years later but wasn’t re-elected. Two years later he was rejected for Land Officer. At 45, he ran for Senate and lost. Two years later, he lost the nomination for vice president. At 49, he ran for Senate again…and lost again. At 51 he was finally elected president of the United States, but with only 40 percent of the popular vote.
THOMAS ALVA EDISON had no formal education; in fact, he quit grade school after three months when his teacher called him "addled." It is said that a reporter asked Edison, who had experienced approximately 2,000 unsuccessful experiments on the incandescent light bulb, what it felt like to have failed so many times. It is reported that Edison said, "I never failed once. I simply found out 2,000 ways it didn’t work."
I don’t know where all these people stood spiritually, but they certainly demonstrated a biblical attitude of determination.
Proverbs 24:16
16 For a righteous man may fall seven times and rise again,
But the wicked shall fall by calamity.
MOSES
Acts 7:22-28
22 And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and deeds.
23 "Now when he was forty years old, it came into his heart to visit his brethren, the children of Israel.
24 And seeing one of them suffer wrong, he defended and avenged him who was oppressed, and struck down the Egyptian.
25 For he supposed that his brethren would have understood that God would deliver them by his hand, but they did not understand.
26 And the next day he appeared to two of them as they were fighting, and tried to reconcile them, saying, ‘Men, you are brethren; why do you wrong one another?’
27 But he who did his neighbor wrong pushed him away, saying, ‘Who made you a ruler and a judge over us?
28 Do you want to kill me as you did the Egyptian yesterday?’
Moses had the right idea, but wrong timing and wrong method. When God spoke to him 40 years later, Moses was tremendously reluctant and said:
* Who am I?
* They will not believe me nor listen to me.
* I am not eloquent.
Moses had to come to a place of believing more in God’s current mercy than in his own past mistakes.
DAVID
David, the man after God’s own heart, (the sweet Psalmist of Israel), had to get past the guilt of murder and adultery.
PETER
Luke 22:31-34 31And the Lord said, "Simon, Simon! Indeed, Satan has asked for you, that he may sift you as wheat.
32 But I have prayed for you, that your faith should not fail; and when you have returned to Me, strengthen your brethren."
33 But he said to Him, "Lord, I am ready to go with You, both to prison and to death."
34 Then He said, "I tell you, Peter, the rooster shall not crow this day before you will deny three times that you know
Jesus knew ahead of time that Peter was going to fail, and He
* loved him anyway
* saved him anyway
* called him anyway
If you will hold on to your faith in the midst of a failure, your faith will convert you from failure back to success.
PAUL
1 Timothy 1:12-13
12 And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord who has enabled me, because He counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry,
13 although I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an insolent man; but I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly in unbelief.
Philippians 3:13
13 Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead…
All of these men had to receive the mercy and the compassion to start over again.
If there’s hope for them, there’s hope for us.
The God of new beginnings worked in their lives and He’ll work in yours!
There are people in congregations across the country who have quit on the inside – they’re just going through the motions.
People have resigned themselves on the inside to binding limitations, but the God of new beginnings wants to
o renew you
o rejuvenate you
o refresh you
But you’ve got to let Him. You’ve got to let go of the past. You cannot quit and wallow in past failures
