Emmanuel Iheke
December 30th, 2018
Tomorrow marks the end of one year and the beginning of another. The beginning of a new year means a lot to everyone. It’s that feeling of starting fresh that inspires all of us to be hopeful for the future. All the BS we went through in 2018 can be written off as the past and we can move on to a new frontier. I would say that this is the time of the year when we are the most ambitious.
“New year, new me”. We all love to say it – almost as much as “new phone, who dis?” We get the formal chance to reinvent ourselves. Set a new standard for how we want life to go. I would say the keyword in all of this is “expectation”. We come up with fresh, new expectations of our lives and from ourselves that can cause us to be better human beings in the long run.
I personally love the new year for this very reason. I believe that we must make great use of this time in order to lay out our expectations for 2019. “Expectation” is essential when dealing with the future. Think about it, we have expectations for everyday we live – some good, some bad. Either way, expectations layout a guideline for our faith to follow. The journey of life requires faith, however without expectation there is no destination. You see, we need both for either of them to make sense.
There is something about writing down your expectations that keep you more accountable of believing in them. This is something I do before the beginning of each year. I write down everything I want God to do for me that year. Some notable items I had on my list for 2018 was to get an internship, a new car, safe traveling, and for my aunt to be healed from cancer. Wanna know what my 2018 was like?
I got my first ever internship as a Marketing and Project Management intern at AT&T over the summer.
My dad, my sister and I put or money together to buy me a new 2018 Honda Accord.
My sister’s life was delivered from a car wreck in November (surely she shouldn’t have made it out of that one.)
And last but not least, my aunty became cancer-free.
Expectation gives way to faith, faith gives way to life-saving, internship-making, new-car-smelling miracles. Write down what you expect to get out of 2018 on a sheet of paper and hold onto it for the entirety of 2019. Cross off everything on the list that you achieve/receive as you go along. At the end of 2019 we can regroup and give God the glory for all He had done.
Happy New Year!
Scripture Reading: Jeremiah 17:9, Luke 22:47-65, 23:1-49; John 15:13
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Scripture Reading: Jeremiah 17:9, Luke 22:47-65, 23:1-49; John 15:13
Doing so can lead to a life characterized by a constant pursuit of “the next thing,” an endless chase with no clear destination, and a futile quest for less fulfilling pursuits. On the other hand, a life that isn’t guided God’s purpose …
It’s not just minimum efforts that could mean a lack of loving the Lord in action. Sometimes, like Martha (Luke 10:38-42), it looks like doing too much without the heart of the matter, which is Christ. We are so into what we look like …
But do we realize or grasp who we already have at our disposal, the power that He holds in his hand, and the intimacy level that God has with us of knowing …
All this is to say that our personal circumstances have no bearing upon what God can do with and for us when we trust Him and as my father would say …
Most importantly, there is enough space and mercy for me to make mistakes. He does not demand perfection, only our heart, and …
In times when our trust in God is wavering, one helpful thing to do is to remember the ways He has been faithful to you in the past …
So I ask us all, how do we forget or even doubt the freedom we have in Jesus? Like our ancestors the Israelites of old, history always seems to repeat itself …
Salt and light each have very distinct qualities and unmistakable when present. They also function to modify and transform …
This experience was a reminder to me that God can be in the “still small voice”, and that sometimes your breakthrough requires a physical move …
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It sometimes occurs to me that His mercy may not be enough for me, that I might be too bad for Him, or too much to fit in His hand. I am having to learn that He is …
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