Starting the year on the wrong side of the bed might make some of us feel or think that this year will be a bad year, but in reality it's won't be. We might have started the year on a bad note, but we can still have a great year if we make the right choices.
Sure, there are a lot of advice columns and articles pretty much anywhere: the internet, the TV, magazines, and even newspapers. But if there's one authoritative source of all the best advice for making the best choices, it's the Bible.
The word of God contains all the profitable instruction that we need for life and godliness - a life that's full of peace, joy, and security no matter what happens all-year-round. 2 Timothy 3:16-17 tells us,
"All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work."
Now that we've established that God's word is the perfect source of instruction and guidance, let's believe its words for us to have a great year ahead of us. Here are some Bible verses that will guide us and encourage us to hope for and work for a great year ahead of us.
We should seek God, who plans the best for us - Jeremiah 29:11-13
"For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart."
Nothing can separate us from the love of God - Romans 8:31-39
"What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Who shall bring a charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written:
"For Your sake we are killed all day long; We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter."
"Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
God is hands-on in the process of making us more like Christ - Romans 8:26-29
"Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren."
