Happy New Year or Happy Old Years?

If you start the New Year bringing the old things such as the old thoughts, old ideas, old character, and the old person inside of you, how can you have a new life? This is impossible. Because your mind is still old, so you will be starting the New Year with an old state of mind. In this way, your expectations will be frustrated once again.

The good and new things that you are expecting for, will not come true. That’s why it is important to start a New Year with a new mind, new ideas and objectives. In another word: New perspectives.

When you have a new mind, you can see everything new, everything differently. You will act differently, You will have a new way of looking at your situation because God Himself will give you this new mind. Things that seem to be bad and boring, it will start to make sense for you. For example: How many people live their whole life complaining about their lives, husband, work, wife, parents and friends? When they were jobless, they were complaining. After they find a job, they are still complaining because the money is not enough. Many people live but they want to die, and yet many people are dying and they want to live… Where is the problem?

The problem is in the mind of the person. Their mind must be restored and fixed. (Romans12:2)
When you have a new mind, everything changes: you look at your husband and your wife with a different eye. Now, you don’t criticize them anymore, but you look at them with good eyes. You feel good when you are at home working or doing any other thing. You do everything wholeheartedly with joy because of this new mind that you have.

Usually, when the year starts many of our friends and families and even people that we don’t even know they come to us and say, “Happy New Year”, but how can you have a Happy New Year? How can you make the New Year a new beginning?

The answer is “restart”. When you reach a stage in your life where everything went wrong, your dreams were shattered… The best option is to restart. For you to restart something, it means for you to start all over again. Understand that if you don’t have a new mind and a new vision which comes when you are truly born of God, you will not be able to “restart”.

That is why, in this New Year what I want the most is for you to have inside of your heart the “desire to be born again, born of God” as your main target, especially in this beginning of the year. With the new birth given by the Holy Spirit, you will receive a new life and with this new life, the New Year will really be NEW for you. The way you look, the way you face your problems and the way you behave.

If you enter into the New Year with your old mentality nothing will change, you will keep on living the old years of your life (your past). However if you receive a new mind, everything will be new for you.

Then there will be no evil spirits that can resist, there will be no walls that you will not overcome. You will have a happy and blessed year, because now you have a new mind.

Of course we are going to have many challenges as the New Year begins, we will have problems, but we have to be strong because the challenges and problems are great opportunities to show our faith and determination that has been granted by the new mind.

Don’t run away, don’t give up, don’t be weakened and never lose hope before the problems and circumstances. Keep moving forward because what you want is ahead of you. Do not stop.

                                                 And now? Happy New Year or happy old years? You decide!


                                                                                                                                                             Bishop Marcelo Rocha
                                                                                                                                                      pastormarcelo@uckg.co.nz