Looking Back to Move Forward

Another eventful and tumultuous year is pulling down the curtains and we are at the threshold of stepping into a new one with new hopes, new resolutions, great expectations and excitement. What has been the biggest takeaways, the big learning curves, the eye openers, the high and low points of this year? It is good to look back before we get all exited and dressed up to usher in the New Year. For some it has been an amazing year of blessings, of fulfilment of Gods promises, of lives impacted, open doors and breakthroughs in our lives. For some of us it has been a mixed bag of ups and downs, great excitement and great pain, pure fulfilment and terrible losses and for some of us it has been a pretty bad year in many ways with sickness, financial troubles and personal losses. But whatever it has been, it is very important that we hit the pause button for a moment and look back and take stock of what God has done in our lives before we step into a new year.

In Psalm 103, King David opens up the Psalm with this incredible verse, “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy Name, Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits” and then he goes on to list those benefits one by one. Even a hardcore pessimist with nothing good to claim for this year, if he seriously takes few minutes to reflect on the year that was, most probably the chances are that he will end up positive, listing the things that God has blessed him with rather than complaining. That is the power of looking back and reflecting.

Makes us grateful: - It is like the little kid who was always complaining that God has not blessed him with anything good, so his father asked him to take a sheet of paper and list down all the small and big things that God has done in his life from when he can remember. After few minutes he came running back to his dad asking for more sheets of paper as the list was innumerable and he just couldn’t stop writing and thanking God.  It would be really amazing if we did that, it will surely surprise us and we will be driven to our knees in thankfulness and worship, irrespective of what we have gone through, all the success, joy, pain, suffering and heartbreaks but through it all we will still see the grace of God shining through in amazing brilliance. “Count your blessings, name them one by one and it will surprise you what the lord has done”.

It's humbling:- with all the arrogance and pride we might proclaim that we made it through the year with our own strength, brilliance and hard work and be proud of our achievements, but one good closer look at our own mortal, fallible lives, which we are  not even certain if it will go on for the next minute was in reality a gift from God , and the realisation that the strength of our hands was His grace, will surely humble us to acknowledge the greatness and sovereignty of God on the year that was and we will have no hesitation in proclaiming along with the song writer that we made it through because of Him.

"For every answered prayer, Oh yeah, for always being there
For love that hears us when we call, For arms that lift us when we fall, oh Lord
Oh, You have always been Right beside us, leading us all along the way
And we made it through (we made it through) Because of You”.

Sets right our perspective to look forward:- As we step into a new year, many of us are apprehensive, some of us anxious to know what the new year has in store for us, some of us look for signs, scramble for the promise cards using it like tarot cards, some of us run behind so called prophets and  prophecies, desperate to hear what we want to hear that will tickle our ears and sadly there is no dearth for unscrupulous elements who are waiting to manipulate this paranoia for their own benefits. But if we take a moment to look back and reflect on what God has done in the past, His enduring faithfulness, His unconditional love, His encompassing protection, His overflowing provision, then we will realize of what He is capable of doing in the future, our perspective will be completely different. It will be a higher perspective, a perspective that is promised for those who Wait upon the Lord in Isaiah 40:31, a mounting up and soaring like the eagles perspective; we will be convinced and persuaded that the Lord who has led us thus far, who has been faithful all these years, He is unchanging, He is the same yesterday, today and forever and He is holding our future securely in His hands and He has amazing plans in store for us and He will lead us in ways above and beyond what we can imagine in the new year. He is absolutely in control of our lives and all we need to do is just trust and obey.  He has the best in store for us.