New Life and New Hope

This post contains thoughts that the Lord has been giving to me about this year (2007). This is going to be a year of new things in the people of God. A year of leaving the religious and entering into a new and powerful place of ministry. Jesus is going to break forth with new life and new hope in His people this year.


Acts 2:46-47
46Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

A new time to go house to house. God will add to the church, and it will not just be those who go to Sunday Morning chruch services, for many will come to homes and house churches and experience new life and community in Christ. We are going to see a new growth of the Church, not the Sunday morning church times, but a new growth of people who believe and rally together with other believers.

Acts 4:13
When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.

God is giving a new boldness and a new confidence, but not in a religious way or by using religious methods. The people in the world are going to notice something new in the people of God, they are going to notice that they people have been with Jesus. We are going to see God move in our prayer times, our quiet times, and our times of study - and it is going to show to the world.

1 Thess 1:6-8
6You became imitators of us and of the Lord; in spite of severe suffering, you welcomed the message with the joy given by the Holy Spirit. 7And so you became a model to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia. 8The Lord's message rang out from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia—your faith in God has become known everywhere. Therefore we do not need to say anything about it,

God is moving in our lives as we are becoming real followers of Jesus and because of that we will be examples of a relationship. And the news is going to go out. And there will be no need for advertisement, people are going to see things and experience things, and they will pass it on to people they know - and it will happen over and over until people from all around will know that God is moving in the lives of His people.

1 Thess 1:9-10
9for they themselves report what kind of reception you gave us. They tell how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, 10and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath.

People will see that lives are being changed, that people are being freed from idols, freed from bondages (TV, internet, pornography, drugs, alcohol, food, etc..) and that people (the Christians) are being fulfilled by serving the Lord, the people of God, and those in the world around them. Christians will expereince new freedom as they leave the bondages of the world and enjoy a new liberty in becoming a servant of Christ.

2 Cor 5:17-21
17Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 18All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

We are new creatures in Christ, and there will be a new pouring out of a true and real and powerful ministry of reconciliation. People will come to Christ as Christians stop playing Church, as they stop being religious, and start living as ambassadors of Christ - being His representatives and His agents of grace and mercy and love.

Col 1:27
Chirst in you, the hope of glory

Christ is going to shine forth in His people as new hope, real hope, is shown forth in the lives of the people of God.

1 Pet 3:15
But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect,

As the hope of Christ is alive in our lives we will start living ready, and we will see new opportunities to speak forth and show forth (demonstrate) the reality of the hope of God.

He is alive in the world today! He is alive in the world in the lives of He people.

God bless you all