Redeemed is a life-changing concept

Ready or not—a bold New Year has arrived, bringing with it untold opportunities and fresh beginnings. Maybe it offers a chance to “buy back” a lost vision for the future or a reason to get excited about a different job. Perhaps your New Year is promising deeper relationships or allowing higher educational pursuits. Twenty Twenty might be a clean slate on which to redeem a powerless existence for life-changing directions.

Doing life better is what my father used to refer to as “turning over a new leaf.” It usually meant my actions or attitudes needed to change. From his perspective, I was going the wrong way, and he was usually right.  

Personally, my life-changing direction came when I started cooperating with the fact that God loves me. It’s a powerful place to be: reclaimed, redeemed by powerful love that expresses itself in forgiveness. 

Romans 8:1 “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” God gives new beginnings—free from blame. Liberated. Released. 

Redeemed Includes Living on Unseen Resources

If you’ve ever experienced an exceptional view, one that positively took your breath away, then it might have also made you feel you could see forever. Moments like these are good for showing us how finite we really are. 

Embracing the vastness of the future one day at a time is a tall order all by itself. We weren’t meant to go it alone. Our being redeemed includes living on unseen resources. God created us to depend on him. 

Revising how we live might be part of our New Year’s resolution, but there’s much more to life than exchanging a bad attitude for a positive and productive one, more to change than changing ourselves. Life-changing inspiration is to be redeemed, retrieved by God to be the person we’ve never been before, tapping into the unlimited supply of his love. 

Isaiah 44: 22 “I have swept away your offenses like a cloud, your wrongdoings like the morning mist. Return to me for I have redeemed you.”

Redeemed is a Powerful Position for Living

Did you lament the fact that last year you didn’t climb high enough, didn’t go deep enough, didn’t try hard enough? Or did you find yourself wanting the world at your feet, thinking that would be the most powerful position for living? 

Optimism opens the door on a fresh start with the beginning of the New Year. We have clean calendars, perhaps various resolutions to make the next twelve months better than the last. A New Year is a distinct opportunity to exchange what didn’t work in the past for what might work with a restart.

Do you aspire to soar like the eagles or wish to zoom in and see the future? Romans 8:37 says, “. . .  in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” Simply put, God provides the victory. 

Revelation 3: 8 “I have set before you an open door, which no one can shut . . .” But we exercise remarkable restraint in accepting new beginnings, in accepting that being redeemed is a powerful position for living.

What is holding you back from cooperating with the fact that God loves you?

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