Happy New Year from my family to yours!

I’m not sure what your new year look like so far.  Perhaps you’ve greeted this new year with joy and excitement at the possibility of new beginnings after a long 2017.  Or perhaps you’ve welcomed this new year with weariness, still tired in mid-January from the craziness of December.  Or perhaps you’ve opened the door to 2018 with a low-lying level of anxiety of all that lies before you in the months ahead.

If you’re anything like me, you’ve greeted the new year with all three emotions going on at the same time – joy at the gift of new beginnings, weariness that still lingers after a long December, and a bit of anxiety about all that lies ahead…for me, homeschooling, moving two times, writing, teaching…and those are just the things I know for certain and don’t include the looming uncertain and unknown.

But at the center of all three emotions lies an anchor of rest, hope, and peace.  And it’s not tied to money in a bank account, or the health of my children, or the stability of relationships with family and friends – for all of those things are unsure and to some measure, beyond my control.  But my anchor is tied to the hope and certain peace that comes from relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, an anchor that holds fast and I know will weather every storm (although preferably not another hurricane).

On the back of our New Year’s card I wrote this message, and it’s a message I sincerely hope and pray for each of us: “We are thankful for a God who cannot change, yet whose love changes everything.  May 2018 be a year of great change from a great God whose love never fails.”

Those words come from a song I’ve been listening to lately from a group called “All Sons and Daughters.”  The song, called Rest in You, has a line that says, “You [God] cannot change, yet you change everything.”  That one line has played on repeat in my heart and mind for weeks now, and it has helped me tremendously as I have thought about navigating the pages of a new year.

I do not know what changes lie ahead (and I don’t deal well with change; I pretty much like things status quo), but I do know the God of my heart, the God of my childhood, the God who got me through junior high (and that took some doing), the God of my adulthood, the God of my marriage, the God of my children, the God of my past, present, and future, the God of the Bible, the God of the church down the street and the church worldwide does not change.  

He does not change in His perfect holiness, His justice, His mercy, His forgiveness, His power, His sufficiency, His grace…but He changes everything.

Think about your year for a moment.  There isn’t a hopeless situation or a trial that can occur or a death or a sickness or a week or a season or a day or a year where His love cannot sustain you and His power cannot change you.  His presence changes everything.  Hope sweeps in moment-by-moment, day-by-day, with the sound of His voice and the tread of His feet.  There is no life beyond His reach or circumstance beyond His ability to change radically, completely, and irreversibly for good for all eternity.

So walk confidently into this new year knowing that if you know and love Jesus Christ and are known by Him, He will not change on you or fail you, but His love and mercy and grace and strength in your life can change everything.

And it begins, as my friend Robert Hurley once said years ago, with a “bent heart, bent will, and bent knee.”  Change occurs in the hearts of those who are yielded to Him, trusting, Him, loving Him, surrendered to Him, trusting His unchanging nature in the day-to-day changes of everything.

To help me remember His unchanging nature and His ability to change things on a moment-by-moment, life-by-life basis, I know myself well enough to know that I have to be connected to and reading His Word, reminding myself of His character and promises on a daily basis.

Reading God’s Word and applying it through prayer, meditation, and the help of the Holy Spirit takes a plan, persistence, a lot of coffee, early mornings, and hard work.  But there is no greater need in this new year than to make a plan to keep myself engaged with the God who does not change through His unchanging Word.

To do that, I have several resources that have been a huge help to me that I wanted to share with you.

I am huge believer in reading scripture slowly, passage by passage, verse by verse, and letting it sink in with much study and thought.  Part of the reason is that I am a slow processor, but the other reason is that since scripture has so many layers, if I read it quickly or in large chunks, I miss the nuances and deep truths it always has to offer.

But my favorite theologian, my brother Taylor, challenged me to not only dig deeply slowly through specific passages of scripture but to always be reading through the Bible in a year’s amount of time so that I do not miss the great, sweeping narrative the Bible has to tell.

To do both well, I felt like I needed two hours a day of uninterrupted, sit-down-in-my-chair study time, and at this stage of life, and in most people’s stage of life, let’s be real here: “Ain’t nobody got time for that.”

But Taylor shared an idea and an app with me that I have loved – the app is called ReadScripture, and it gives you a reading plan each day for reading through the Bible in a year.

Here’s why I like it:

#1 – it breaks up the Bible into chronological sections and has you reading on the timeline in which Biblical events actually occurred.  It makes much more sense to my brain than reading different parts of the Bible every day and skipping around.

#2 – Many of the readings have a video that goes with them, and the videos are excellent.  They help to explain what I am about to read and enable me to put pieces of the Bible together as a whole in a way I have never done before.

#3 – Instead of reading the passage of the day, I listen to it.  And that was Taylor’s idea.  He suggested that I use my time in the mornings for prayer and study of specific passages and then to listen to the video and the passage of Scripture being read on an audio app of the Bible.  I do this while on a run, in the car, or as I am getting dressed in the morning.  I have found that instead of filling my space with white noise, I am learning to fill it with intention and purpose by listening to the story of Scripture.  And so far, it’s been my part of the day I look forward to the most.

In order to listen to the passage of Scripture for the day, I downloaded the ESV (English Standard Version) app and listen to the chapters being read aloud that way.

For resources for more specific or intentional study, check out Kelly Minter’s new Bible study on 2 Corinthians called All Things New.  I am several weeks into the study and am loving it.  She is both humorous and challenging in her commentary, both of which I appreciate in the quiet early morning hours.

And, of course, there’s Tim Keller.  He just came out with a new devotional book on the book of Proverbs called God’s Wisdom for Navigating Life, and, no surprise, it’s excellent.  His other yearly devotional book on the Psalms called The Songs of Jesus is excellent as well and is a great platform for jumping off into both reading and praying through the psalms.

So…take your pick.  Listen to the wide, sweeping narrative of Scripture, hone in on specific Scripture through intentional study, or do both.  But by all means, do something.

This year, make a plan for engaging in God’s Word, to remind yourself day in and day out, no matter how seasons change, that you love and serve a God who is unchanging yet who changes everything.

This is the one constant we need for all that lies ahead.