“Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone; the new has come!” ―2 Corinthians 5:17
“I suppose when we wake on January 1st, the world will look the same. But there is a reminder of the Resurrection at the start of each new year, each new decade. That’s why I also like sunrises, [Sundays], and new seasons. God seems to be saying, ‘With me you can always start afresh.’” ―Ada Lum
Happy New Year.! Happy new twenty-first-century decade! Happy fresh start, second chance, tabula rasa. The words New Year burst with the promise and exhilaration of beginnings―a chance to erase last year’s sins and mistakes as effortlessly as fresh snow covers the earth in purity.
One winter, in order to ring out the old year and usher in the new, I spent a few days contemplation alone at Innisfree, our cozy cabin-in-the-woods. After a meaningful time of communion and confession to the Lord in my journal, I took a two-mile trek around Lake St. Gallen to continue our conversation. Not a soul was there―just the Lord and I.
Here is what I wrote in my journal immediately after that experience:
“O Lord, as I took a late-afternoon walk around the lake, delicate snow-doilies dissolved into teardrops. I had the impression that You were weeping over all the sin in the world and my sins, in particular. As snow mists moistened my face, I felt Your tears cleansing each sin confessed.
Then it struck me. As a sheer, inexplicable act of grace, Your tears had frozen into a blessed blanket of woolen white. All I could see in every direction was white upon white, snow upon snow, grace upon grace, forgiveness upon forgiveness. Not one inch of the world’s mud or my own muddy tracks were detectable. Snow had completely buried the ground and my sin. I was engulfed―nearly blinded―by the white light of Your purity and love!”
When I returned to the cabin, I was utterly amazed to immediately and serendipitously open my Bible to this verse: “‘Come now, and let us reason together,’ says the Lord. ‘Though your sins are as scarlet, they will be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they will be like wool (Is. 1:18, NASB).”
The incredible reality is that we needn’t wait for a New Year for new beginnings and fresh starts. When we are born again and receive God’s gift of faith to believe in and follow Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, we have eternal life and are made new―new creations in Him. And we needn’t tarnish our newness. Sin confessed and repented of is forgiven and forgotten by God. We serve a God of new life and resurrection, and each day we may begin afresh in His love.
This year, may you experience a truly happy New Year, happy in Jesus. May you experience new life in Him and His resurrection power to overcome your sins. God is faithful, and His mercies are new every morning. Praise Him!
Your Invitation . . . How often do you confess your sins to the Lord? I’ll admit that I can be extremly lax in my confession, and when I am I suffer for it. My sin weighs me down with guilt and I my fellowship with the Lord is stifled. When we receive Christ as our Lord and Savior and become new creations in Him, He forgives, cleanses, and justifies us from all our sin―past, present, and future. God sees us pure, robed in Christ’s righteousness. Still, as long as we live in this world, we will continuously sin because we live our life in our “flesh.” Therefore, we must daily confess those sins which God’s Spirit brings to our attention. Author A. Wetherell Johnson says, “As one matures in Christ, actions that inadequate knowledge did not formerly define as sin, now viewed in the light of increased Bible knowledge, must be confessed as sin before God.” And author Becky Tirabassi emphasizes that “admitting your sins to God daily will keep your interior life honest and clean before God.” This year, prayerfully consider reading Ps. 139:23-24 on a daily basis, honestly asking God to search your heart, asking Him to show you anything that you have done which offends Him and others. Then open your journal, pouring out your confession to the Lord. See its pristine pages as representing Christ’s purity, absorbing the ugliness of your sins. He took the punishment for your sins upon Himself so that you could be healed from sin and live in freedom (Isaiah 53:4-5). The sooner you admit your sins to the Lord and turn from them, the sooner you will be relieved from the burden of your guilt, the sooner your “bones crushed by sin” will rejoice (Ps. 51).

Rich Dixon, Author/Speaker
In essentials, unity.
Happy Saturday!
Where is Jesus?
Am I a Christian?