Begin Again

Notes
Transcript
Introduction
It’s a new year. New goals. New dreams. New habits. With the calendar change there comes this eagerness to achieve and accomplish.
I saw this reel on Instagram and there’s a lot of truth behind it, but the guy said just because the calendar year changes doesn’t mean that your life is magically going to change.
[GYM MEMBERSHIP/YOU PUT IN THE WORK]
The same is true for you and I in our relationship with Christ and in your life.
You cannot control your circumstances, but you can control how you act in those circumstances.
The truth is that the same things, struggles, circumstances that you ended 2022 with are still with you today. The calendar just has a different year.
We would be lying to ourselves if we said, “God, I’m not going to do _____ this year”, and didn’t change anything.
God is not going to bless that. He will bless a fully surrendered heart that says, “God, I’m not going to do _____ this year. Instead, I’m going to do ____, _____ and _____ to help me not do that.
Body
Tonight is our first service of the year. We use the word first fruits service to say that we are giving God an offering for the year. Scripture tells us that if the first fruits are blessed, then the whole lump will be blessed.
Supernatural blessing can come from an insignificant offering.
You see this throughout the Bible. Time after time again, ordinary people like you and I are supernaturally blessed, because they brought a fully surrendered heart before God willing to go, do and say how the Spirit would lead.
God is still in that business today. He is looking for people that would surrender themselves to Him. God will always bless a willing spirit.
Jeremiah 17:5–6 NIV
This is what the Lord says: “Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who draws strength from mere flesh and whose heart turns away from the Lord. That person will be like a bush in the wastelands; they will not see prosperity when it comes. They will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives.
Jeremiah is reminding us that our hearts, above everything, are deceitful. Listen to what Mark says…
Mark 7:20–23 NIV
He went on: “What comes out of a person is what defiles them. For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person.”
At the core of who you are, our nature us to choose sin. Thus, our need a Jesus. By His blood and Spirit we can live in Christ’s likeness.
Jeremiah 17:7–8 NIV
“But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.”
We see that Jeremiah is making a contrast. If you trust in your flesh your heart will depart from the Lord. Why? Because the heart is deceitful.
Our heart often times, presents a false heart-fulfillment that leads to disappointment.
[DEAD END ROAD]
Ephesians 4:20–24 NIV
That, however, is not the way of life you learned when you heard about Christ and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.
What we desire, is not always what we need.
The statement ‘be true to your heart’ is false because the heart is deceitful above all things.
Jeremiah 17:9–10 NIV
The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? “I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind, to reward each person according to their conduct, according to what their deeds deserve.”
In 2023, if your plans and goals don’t contain God its going to be hard for Him to bless it.
Closing
I believe that my generation and Gen Z have commitment issues. Anyone know someone that has commitment issues?
[GYM BUDDY]
Our generations are “all in” until there’s opposition or the difficulty is turned up. Believe me student, living for Christ is hard but its worth it. Jeremiah says, “…whose hope and confident expectation is the Lord” meaning that if your expectation is in Him you’ll never be disappointed.
This year as we begin again, my prayer is that we would press deeper into what God wants to do in and through us.
Prayer
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