Monday September 24, 2012

What are your plans for New Year’s Eve this year?

Plan something more godly than drunken revelry.

 

Read Exodus  12:1-2

 

Aussies love to party. Any excuse is a good excuse to party. And perhaps the biggest partying is reserved for New Year’s Eve, especially the ones with special meaning like the bicentennial New Year. Several hundred thousand people gathered around Sydney Harbour that year to celebrate and to watch the fire works and to party, drink and celebrate.

 

Though God hates drunkenness and alcohol fuelled violence, He called His people to celebrate, especially every new year. Israel was called to rejoice and celebrate each and every single year in remembrance of what God had done.  Over 400 years ago God made a promise to Abram (later called Abraham) and entered into a covenant with Him. A covenant is a special relational bond that is sealed in blood and with certain legal and life threatening conditions for its breach. Over the next 400 years Abraham’s descendants ended up in Egypt (that’s the story of Genesis 12-50). They increased in number and eventually became slaves of Pharaoh. For centuries they cried out to God and now He heard them. As you read Exodus 1-11 you see how God powerfully and miraculously defeated Pharaoh, Ra on Earth, and brought Israel out of Egypt. God knocked Pharaoh to the canvas in a 10 round fight.

 

Each year Israel was to celebrate her freedom, her formation as a nation and pay homage to the God who had freed them and formed them.

 

We still have a party hard mentality in Australia and in some ways Christians are no different. But wouldn’t it be great if Christians used times like the New Year to remember what God has done in their lives, to pay homage to Him and to give Him the glory.  Rather than waking up with a hangover, a headache and blurred vision, we might wake up with a smile, with driving passion and irremovable joy in our hearts. Hmm, is it worth trading in in partying for remembering God? You try it and you decide!

 

Prayer:

As you engage in adoration, confession and thanksgiving focus on what God has done in you through Christ Jesus.

 

Adoration:

 

Confession:

 

Thanks:

 

Supplication:

¨ Ask the Lord to bring great blessing to the Reformed Bible College in Myanmar. Pray that they would have the resources needed to continue teaching students and equipping them to minister the gospel. Pray that we would continue to hear of God’s good work and grace poured out to many.

¨ Pray that Mustard Seed Orphanage in Myanmar would also be equipped and stocked with enough resources to continue helping, supporting and training up orphans, widows and disabled people in their distress. Pray that God would be glorified through their ministry.