Here we are at the beginning of another calendar year—2024! What will this new year bring? It will bring good things, new discoveries, and experiences, and it will bring challenges and difficulties. But when we look at 2024 from God’s Perspective, it will enable us to step forward into this year with confidence in Him because He knows the future and has promised to journey with us through all the ups and downs of 2024.
Isaiah 43:18-19 says: “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”
God is inviting us to perceive the new things that He is going to be accomplishing for us in 2024. You may be facing health circumstances that seem impossible to overcome, or financial difficulties that seem like they have no solution. But God says that He can make “a way” where there is no way. He can bring flowing rivers of water into the desert, so we need not fear the future, when have God with us making 2024 a year of new possibilities for faith to grow and hope to carry us through to the end of this new year.
Our little church in Ellensburg, Washington was built during the difficult years following the depression and there was very little money to build a proper church building. But God somehow provided materials from other church building projects around the Upper Columbia Conference and volunteers were available to provide the manpower to raise up a little church building for God.
But by the early 1980’s the little church was very inadequate for the purpose of being an attractive place of worship. The women’s bathroom that was built under the exterior concrete landing of the upper main floor over the daylight basement, would leak and drip through the concrete into the bathroom whenever it rained, or the snow and ice would melt on the landing above. Also, the classrooms were small, and the pews were built from pew kits, and they were very uncomfortable. What could we do to have a new church?
So, at prayer meeting, the two or three people who attended, began praying that God would provide a miracle for a new church. One day, the pastor’s wife of the church our church rented to, told us of a very nice newer church that had been sold to a man who was going to remodel it into four rental apartments to provide income for his daughter’s college education. This pastor’s wife said to us, “That church was dedicated to God to be a church, not an apartment building. Why don’t you go and talk to the new owner of the building and see if he would be willing to trade his church building for your church building plus whatever cash you have saved for a new church and maybe borrow some extra funds to close the deal.” And that is what we did. We traded buildings and by the summer of that year, God had provided a nicer, larger, and more modern church building for our congregation to worship in.
God’s perspective of the future had plans in it we didn’t even know was a possibility. But He prepared our hearts to see His power, and He worked a miracle for us to have this new church.
In this new year, 2024, God has new beginnings for you, too. Trust Him to provide a new thing for you to experience and your faith will grow as you allow Him to lead you successfully through 2024!
--Pastor Ben Moor
