Continue to look to God in 2018!
“I lift up my eyes to the mountains—where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.” (Psalm 121:1-2)
The story has been told of a Christian named Frederick Nolan, who was fleeing from his enemies during a time of persecution in North Africa. Being pursued by them over a hill and through a valley with no place to hide, he fell exhausted into a cave, expecting to be caught. Awaiting his death, he saw a spider weaving a web. Within minutes, the spider had woven a beautiful web across the mouth of the cave. The man’s pursuers arrived, but on seeing the unbroken web assumed it impossible for him to have entered the cave. Later Nolan exclaimed, “Where God is, a spider’s web is like a wall. Where God is not, a wall is like a spider’s web.”
Frederick Nolan truly understood to look to the Lord at all times and trust in his love, power and care. As we head into 2018 think about “Where will you look in the new year?”
Each of us has to admit that there have been times when we failed to have complete confidence of looking only to and trusting only in God. We have thought that we could make things happen on our own, we have doubted God or even been angry at God.
If we honestly say “my help comes from the Lord,” it does not mean that we look to him only when times get tough or when we are at our wits end. The first help we need from the Lord is looking to him for forgiveness of our sins. The greatest help we need as we look to God is for him to wipe clean the slate of our sin because Jesus paid for each of those sins by his death on the cross.
Looking to God for help means that we trust that he will give us all we need. So often people look to God and expect him to give them whatever they want. Look back at how God gave you what you needed in 2017 and you will quickly realize how richly he blessed you, not always with what you wanted, but certainly with what you needed.
Proverbs 3:5-6 gives us some great insight into what it means to look to God for help, not only as we head into a new year, but every day of our lives – “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.”
If you fully understand that passage you realize that looking to the Lord for help and trusting in him means emptying yourself of any reliance on what you bring to the table. That takes a lot of faith and trust. But if you look back, not just at 2017, but all through your life and even through the course of history, you can see how people trusted in God and he did amazing things, far greater and wonderful than we could dream of or imagine.
Will we perfectly look to the God for his help every day in 2018? No. What a joy it is to know that when we fail to do so, we can again look to God for the help of his forgiveness and then ask him to give us the confidence to fully rely on him and trust in his plans.
God’s blessings to you in 2018 as you face the New Year trusting and looking to that the same God who has brought you this far in life and will continue to be with you!