A new year is upon us. Do you make New Year’s resolutions? For me, it is a time of “new beginnings.” My wife and kids all know this about me; I analyze the past year, write or think out both the good and bad, and plan for the next 12 months. I try to be realistic in my assessments. I set goals and perhaps most important of all, I get a feeling of hopefulness.

Why hope? I suspect it’s based on the potential for the new year. I believe God is the author of this hope; that this is a new beginning given by God for each of us to start afresh.

God is a God of dates and time. His Word, our “life manual” is full of His intentional use of time – after all, He created time (Genesis 1:1).

Here are just some of the places God mentions time and time periods in His Word:

God created the day and the four seasons – Genesis 1:3–5, Genesis 1:14

God tells us that there is a time for everything – Ecclesiastes 3:1–8

God gave us appointed times for festivals and events – Exodus 12:14–20, Exodus 20:8­–11, Leviticus 23

God gave us appointed times for prophecies and their fulfillment – Daniel 9:24–27, Galatians 4:4

God had a specific timeframe for Jesus’ ministry on earth – Mark 1:15, John 2:4, John 7:6

God tells us that we all have appointed items – Psalm 139:16, Acts 17:26

One of my all-time favorite passages in the Old Testament is Lamentations 3:22–23:

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; His mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

The picture of the Lord’s mercies being new every morning brings me hope. It’s the hope that I can start again trying to serve Him and live a life that honors His gift of salvation.

Years ago, I had an intense life change that was extremely difficult and came with many tears. The morning always came with a new resolve to start again. God mentions the new day bringing joy in Psalm 30:5:

For His anger is but for a moment, and his favor is for a lifetime.
Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning. 

And God tells us in Psalm 143:8 that the morning is a time to gain instruction from the Lord on the direction for our life:

Let me hear in the morning of Your steadfast love, for in You I trust.
Make me know the way I should go, for to You I lift up my soul. 

Given the importance God places on time and the new day, for me, the new year offers fertile ground to commit to starting new…to recommit your life to God and your family, and to living a life that is worthy of being called a child of the “Most High.”

So don’t let the new year go by without thoughtful reflection, determined planning, and a realistic look at who you are now, what God is doing in your life, and who God wants you to be. Then get ready to enjoy the hope and joy that comes from God’s new morning mercies on a grand scale.

Biblical References

• Genesis 1:3-5 – And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

• Genesis 1:14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years,

• Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 – For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.

• Exodus 12:14-20 – This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord; throughout your generations, as a statute forever, you shall keep it as a feast. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall remove leaven out of your houses, for if anyone eats what is leavened, from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel. On the first day you shall hold a holy assembly, and on the seventh day a holy assembly. No work shall be done on those days. But what everyone needs to eat, that alone may be prepared by you. And you shall observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread, for on this very day I brought your hosts out of the land of Egypt. Therefore you shall observe this day, throughout your generations, as a statute forever. In the first month, from the fourteenth day of the month at evening, you shall eat unleavened bread until the twenty-first day of the month at evening. For seven days no leaven is to be found in your houses. If anyone eats what is leavened, that person will be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he is a sojourner or a native of the land. You shall eat nothing leavened; in all your dwelling places you shall eat unleavened bread.

• Exodus 20:8-11- Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

• Leviticus 23

• Daniel 9:24-27 – Seventy weeks are decreed about your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place. Know therefore and understand that from the going out of the word to restore and build Jerusalem to the coming of an anointed one, a prince, there shall be seven weeks. Then for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again with squares and moat, but in a troubled time. And after the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing. And the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war. Desolations are decreed. And he shall make a strong covenant with many for one week, and for half of the week he shall put an end to sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of abominations shall come one who makes desolate, until the decreed end is poured out on the desolator.

• Galatians 4:4 – But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of woman, born under the law,

• Mark 1:15 – and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

• John 2:4 – And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does this have to do with Me? My hour has not yet come.”

• John 7:6 – Jesus said to them, “My time has not yet come, but your time is always here.”

• Psalm 139:16 – Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.

• Acts 17:26 – And He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place,