Setptember New Year's Day

I can do all things through him who strengthens me. (Philippians 4:13, NRS).

Good Morning!
School begins for many students across the United States this week. While many kids will miss their summer, I miss sending our kids off with sharpened new pencils, new notebooks, and a renewed excitement for what was to come on the first day of school. As our children were growing up, our family celebrated the end of summer and the new beginning of a school year on the American holiday, Labor Day. Accordingly, the day after Labor Day symbolized a New Year's Day for our family.

It makes sense that when we consciously begin each day as a New Year's Day, we are invigorated and renewed. Rather than focusing on the mundane of daily chores and responsibilities, we have the opportunity to begin each day in a new, fresh way. In fact, we have an opportunity to begin the year all over . . . time after time . . . day after day. . . through the transforming work of God. Through Him, the day becomes new as if it were a New Year's Day.

God is like that—He continually gives a brand new beginning, a new day, a fresh start . . . a recreation from what was to what can be on a daily basis.

When the year is new every day—we have the opportunity to realize that the past is the past and anything is possible today. How? Surrender to Christ. The process of surrender is a strengthening process to our whole being. In turn, we are enabled to purposefully live, irregardless of what has occurred in the past. In the ancient days, the Hebrew word, strength, referred to the process of being equipped---as the equipping of an army preparing to go out in battle. While it seems upside down to what we might think, surrender produces strength so that we are equipped to go out into the battles of living.

Get ready--be prepared for each day.

Begin the day as a new day of a New Year.

Start over.

Become new.

Believe God will strengthen (equip) you to do all things this new day.

Be strengthened, equipped to do all things through the presence, power, and peace of Christ.

It's a new day--begin it as if it were the New Year!

Celebrate and make a New Year's resolution for the day!

Learning with you to enjoy the New Year every day,
Kerrie
(All devotions written by Kerrie Palmer ©2007 All Rights Reserved)