Thank you for sharing this journey with us; we trust and pray that the daily strength we draw from our relationship with God will be an encouragement to you as well in your own journey. 

 

Alice and I are very grateful for the constancy of your love, you practical help and spiritual encouragement, and of course your intercessory prayers for my health and my family’s needs.  The wondrous truth is that, what we often consider “a bend in the road” is never a surprise to God, and nothing happens to us without first passing through His loving hands.

 

³⁷No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. ³⁸For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,^[m] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, ³⁹neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:37-39, NIV).

 

The recent turn of events in my health has led some of you to express dismay about what the immediate future may hold for me. But in Christ we have overwhelming confidence that no mere twist and turn of circumstances can separate us from His love and care.

 

When negative things happen unexpectedly it is natural to come unglued emotionally, to lose our mental equilibrium. But I have discovered that there is a spiritual center that cannot be touched or disrupted by the vicissitudes of life.

 

Some who have dabbled in eastern meditation (relaxation techniques, emptying one’s mind of negative thoughts, and channeling positive thoughts) have told me that that the purported psychological and biological benefits are usually transitory.

 

Biblical medication is the opposite – thisspiritual discipline not based on the passive emptying the mind, but rather on actively filling our mind with the correct perspective – to discard any erroneous thinking and align our mind with the right stuff (2 Corinthians 10:5, NASB): ⁵We are destroying speculations and every ^(A)lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the ^(B)obedience of Christ,

 

One practical benefit of this spiritual exercise: our feelings and perspective are less likely to become re-railed like a run-away train.  This is like checking our compass regularly against the true North while hiking through an uncharted wilderness, or making a mid-course adjustment while our space shuttle is in orbit.

 

Perhaps you have tried everything else, but let me assure you that in God alone you can find a true anchor of the soul (Hebrews 6:19, NASB): ¹⁹This ^(A)hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast.

 

When we learn to consistently fix our thoughts on God Himself, He will do the rest for us (Isaiah 26:3, NLT):  ³ You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in you, all whose thoughts are fixed on you!

 

Why settle for less?

 “Do not call to mind the former things, or ponder things of the past.  Behold I will do something new, now it will spring forth; will you not be aware of it?” - Isaiah 43: 18

 

As we turn a new page in our lives to welcome a new year, I hope you find many good things to celebrate… perhaps you have been blessed with good health, a loving family, a new birth or adoption, true friends who stick closer than a brother, a well-deserved recognition, a significant milestone, or even the culmination of a life-long dream. 

 

But what if the past 12 months was characterized by deteriorating health, grief, heart break, betrayal, failure, disappointment, regrets, or some unexpected bump in the road?  As others are “ringing in the new year”, you see only dark clouds gathering in the horizon. You wonder how in the world you will ever find the strength and courage to keep going, much less put the broken pieces of your life back together.

 

Whatever may have happened to you, in God’s eyes there is no such thing as a hopeless situation (Luke 18:27).  Even more importantly, we cannot go so far off the deep end that we find ourselves beyond the reach of His redemptive love, grace, and intervention (Psalm 139:7-12; Romans 8:38-39).

 

The Bible is full of references to God’s recreative power - His ability to make all things new… a new day, a new song, a new covenant, a new heart, a new creation, a new commandment, new wine, new wineskin, new heavens and a new earth.  

 

Even "His loving kindnesses and compassions are new every morning" (Lamentations 3:21-23), an inexhaustible supply each of us can draw upon as needed in every situation, and for every season of life.

 

Some devastating events have occurred in my life that were not my fault; other things have happened as a consequence of my own poor judgment or ill-conceived plans, and yes, call it what it is - sin.  Regardless, God is the one who can give us a fresh start in life by making all things new (Revelations 21:5) – if we will let Him.

 

God’s way is not to ask us to “turn over a new leaf”; the futility of that approach was demonstrated long ago in my own life by a consecutive string of broken New Year’s resolutions dating back farther than I can remember.  

 

What God is offering us is a new life, a life in which the Spirit of God is can make all things new for us: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.” (II Corinthians 5:17). 

 

This new life cannot become ours by rehabilitation, like the refurbished mobile phone I recently got back from the vendor when I turned in a defective unit still under warrantee. Making all things new requires transformation, which God brings about in our lives by the “renewingour mind” (Romans 12:2).   

 

Real change is possible if we are willing to start from the inside out. The process of transformation begins when we present our lives to God “as a living and holy sacrifice”; we come to Him just as we are, and place the broken pieces of our lives on the altar in exchange for His new life. We relinquish the right to direct our own chaotic, messed up lives, and give Him permission to take over, “so that we may prove (learn) what the will of God is, that which is good, acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:2). 

 

God begins to make all things new by changing the way we think (how we see God, ourselves and others, and the world around us), “so that we might walk in newness of life.”(Rom 6:4). He recreates our hearts by changing our values and priorities, freeing us from the tangled web of contrived needs and false expectations.   He redirects our attention from our preoccupation with many things, to the one necessary thing that truly anchors our lives (Matthew 6:33). 

 

Christ came to discard the old wineskins, and to pour new wine into the new wineskins of our lives (Luke 37-39): In place of operating by the unworkable and constricting paradigms of religious performance, He offers us His free gift of salvation, received by grace and through faith (Ephesians 2:8-10). He also gives us a new reason to live; not in an effort to gain His acceptance, but because “we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would work in them.”

 

As has been true of my own cancer journey, our response to everything that happens in life is shaped by our perspective. Many things we lose sleep over today will mean absolutely nothing in ten years much less at the end of our lives, and most certainly in the light of eternity:

 

“That is why we do not give up. Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day. For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long.  Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things that we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.”(II Corinthians 4:16-18, New Living Bible).