Happy New Year

I did it. First time in recent memory. I wrote a check in the new year, and I actually wrote in the correct year the first time. I have burned through more checks reliving the previous year than I care to count. I'm sure I have probably written more that way than I caught and canceled. I suspect the good folks at the bank are fairly lenient this time of year, “Oh, there's another check from that Weatherford guy. Go ahead and accept his payment. He'll figure out it is 2013 by March.”

Too many times, we are guilty of reliving our past. We get stuck, like my old LP's . When that happened, I usually had to tape a couple of pennies to the top of my phonograph needle to get it to play all the way through the record. Listening to the Partridge Family was torture enough, but hearing David Cassidy sing the same line repeatedly was more than even I could stand. (Anyone born after 1975, you can google whatever didn't make sense in the previous passage to understand what I mean.)

We all need a couple of pennies every now and then, to get us out of our rut. God doesn't want us to live in the past (he's forgiven all of that). God wants us moving forward, living for him now, experiencing the abundant life that is found only in Christ. Or as Paul put it:

Philippians 3:13-14 (NIV)
13 Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

Happy NEW Year!