It may be just me, but I notice every year, around the last week of December, that people, believers specifically, start posting stuff about how bad the year was and how good the new year is going to be. It happens annually, and with monotonous regularity.
For whatever reason we are drawn to making declarations about coming year around the last week of the calendar year, and about saying how bad the previous year was.
My thoughts:
This cyclical crazy-making does not make a lot of sense.
Here is why.
I haven’t had a bad year since about 2012 or 2013. That was the year I filed for divorce. But filing for divorce did not make the year bad. Heck, my ex-wife’s adultery which continued to the present, did not make the year bad. What made the year bad was how her behavior affected my sons. Period. The ones I am most loyal to that my ex-wife and I share in common, their emotional and spiritual damage, that is what made that year among the worst.
A plethora of celebrities dying does not make a year bad. A year that caused you to personally struggle a lot and suffer much does not make a year bad. Personal pain can make a year among the most productive.
The monotony with which you curse the previous year, because you effectively are doing that, does not help your timeline.
The monotony with which you utter the same four to six declarations over the coming year, and then the monotony with which you turn right back around 51 weeks later and declare how that year didn’t bring those things drives some of us crazy.
My solution to this non-reality is not necessarily the most gentle, but it might be realistic.
How about we reach forward, talk to Father, and if a year is going to be marked by suffering and destruction, we hear that from Him and speak concerning that?
If a year is going to be marked by pain, as some years are, as 2012 and 2013 were for me, how about we speak that?
Now, let me expand on that concept from my own life. Following my biblically-sanctioned divorce, I connected with some other friends who helped me to restore joy in my own life, and I found my voice again. In the midst of finding that voice, one of those people who helped me negotiate that season with my sons, my Sunday School teacher at the time, who also coached me in forgiveness, also became my wife.
So, 2014 was not a bad year.
Granted, expanding that, 2012 and 2013 were not bad years either. They were years marked by pain. But pain does not make something bad. If you refuse to do anything with the pain, then it becomes unproductive pain, and the year can then be considered unproductive.
But enough of this mentality of “my year was bad, but G-d will make this year better”.
News flash:
Declaring the reality of what the past year was like is not about whether or not your year made you happy or sad, follower of Yeshua. It is not about whether or not too many Hollywood celebrities died. It is not about whether or not people made you feel better or worse about yourself. Instead, it is about whether or not you were and did specifically what Father wanted you to be and do. And if a lot of pain came in the midst of that, and you grew from that pain, that does not affect the year. And cursing the year 51 weeks after you uttered all sorts of prophetic nonsense over the year, and doing this each year, does not make you have better years. Rather, you can be playing right into the enemy’s hands and cursing the cycle of time, which can leave a negative imprint on time.
So, how about instead of “last year sucked, I prophesy this year will be a year of harvest and increase”, perhaps say, “this year wasn’t what I thought it would be, and there was some pain” and then analyze whether or not you grew in or through the pain? And then come back and celebrate the times when you saw the hand of Father, Son, or Holy Spirit move, and write an article or Facebook post about that.
For me, this year was strangely turbocharged because of what has blown open with respect to DID, SRA, CRA and blessings I have written for that group. It also happened to be the year when I reconnected with Exhorters in an unusual way, and was able to work positively with a great many of them.
And now, I must away and fulfill a longstanding need to work my way through Mounce’s Basics of Biblical Greek.
So, friends, let us consider carefully the words we speak in response to the pain we endured, and let us also not throw away the resources that 2017 and its pain were.
Be blessed.
