Verse for the year – Emma Nicholson
As we prayed as a church leadership team, we really felt that this verse was for our church this year, as well as each person in the congregation.
God has repeatedly confirmed this verse to us, through Judith Pitt as she spoke at the beginning of January; through Susanna Matthews from New Life church, who offerred us a banner to display in church with our Verse of the Year on it; through Women’s Aglow, (I gave every lady one of our Verse cards, and I put the banner up behind the band. As the speaker got up to bring her message, it just so happened to be from Isaiah 43:18-19! She headed her talk, ‘Forget all that!’ and spoke a very similar word to the one I had brought the week before); through words and pictures given to each of us at the monthly prayer meeting, and finally, through Alan Saunders who sent me an article that he’d written about St Peter’s Verse for the Year, and in it, he said that when he announced he was leaving CCP, Simy gave him a verse during the worship, which was, (yes, you guessed it!), Isaiah 43:18-19! Just after this, Alan found out that the verse for the year at St Peter’s was Isaiah 43:18-19! I don’t remember any of this. It is so funny how God works and the way He repeats Himself when He really wants us to listen. I’ve included Alan’s article in the magazine so you can read it for yourself.
The context of the passage is that God is speaking to the Israelites about how He is going to rescue them from captivity from the Babylonians.
In verse 16 God tells the Israelites forget about the exodus from Egypt, where He parted the Red Sea so that the entire nation could escape on dry land, before the sea crashed back down into place drowning every one of the Egyptian soldiers and putting an end to Pharoah’s tyrannical reign.
I feel like if I experienced something so miraculous, I would never doubt God again. I mean, it was incredible!
But The Israelites struggled with their freedom. They moaned, they complained, they harked back to when they were slaves and how much better things were because at least they had cucumbers in Egypt! I mean of all the things!
They were constantly looking back at how things used to be.
Do you do this?
Stop going back. Stop living in the past. Stop re-learning the same lessons. Look forward. Move forward.
When we think about looking behind us, I think most of us will think about bad situations, grief, bereavement, regrets, hurts, disappointments. We can think about how people have let us down, rejected us, led us badly. These negative things can keep us trapped in a kind of prison, struggling to move on and with no hope of a happy and fulfilling future.
Has living in the past made you happy? Is it fulfilling? I am going to guess not.
Living either in the past or too far in the future is unhealthy. ‘Don’t worry about tomorrow for today has enough worries of its own’. God has given us today, the present, as a gift. Be present in it.
It is time to draw a line and take a step into your future. Into freedom. Into joy.
If you have done something wrong, repent genuinely. Turn away from it and walk in a different direction. If someone has hurt you, forgive them. Your unforgiveness is doing nothing to them, but it is killing you. Holding unforgiveness is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.
It isn’t easy, but it is necessary.
And listen, God doesn’t ask you to do anything that he doesn’t give you the strength, the tools and the help to do. He doesn’t set us up to fail. If He says to forgive, then He will give you everything you need to forgive.
For your sake, and for your family’s sake, choose to forgive. The Bible is very clear that when you don’t forgive another person, God cannot forgive you. That is scary. Choose forgiveness today.
Why did God tell the Israelites to forget the escape from Egypt? That was an amazing thing to happen, a miraculous, spectacular, God thing. But God tells them to forget it. Why?
Because as good as that was, He has even better things planned for their future.
Forget the former things, whether they were amazing or horrific, don’t dwell on what’s gone before.
Do you still remember back to when Peter Leakey was Vicar, or when Tony was Vicar? Do you think back to when we had scores of young people in CYFA and in Whizz kids? Do you remember when the 8.15 service was full each month drawing people in from other churches?
As a church we have had some wonderful experiences. Alan was fantastic at celebrating what has been and what we’ve achieved. We were wonderfully blessed to have Alan and Ruth, but they’ve gone now. The rules in the Church of England are that we must wait for a number of months before we can even advertise the post as vicar. It is so that the church has a time of grieving, a time of lament. It is exactly what we needed. A time of transition.
We need to let go of what’s gone before, both good and bad, point ourselves forward and look to see what God wants to do next. This month we are advertising for a new vicar, with interviews taking place in April.
I’m sure that for the past few months, God will have been speaking to someone and ruffling up their nest ready to move and take their next steps. We need to pray for our new vicar, because as much as we don’t know who it is yet, God surely does, and He is speaking to them right now about forgetting the past and seeing the new things that God is about to do in their life.
It’s exciting, isn’t it?
There is so much good stuff to come, so many blessings, so many experiences. That is true for each one of us. It is also true for Christ Church. Let me tell you, Jesus loves the church, it is His bride, and He is passionate about it, about us.
God is saying, ‘Get ready church. Prepare your heart for new disciples. Make room. I am bringing people. Make space in your life. Get ready for streams in the desert and rivers in the wasteland.
Get ready for fruitfulness and for times of refreshing’.
God is about to do something new.
The funny thing with new things is that we haven’t seen it before. When there have been moves of the Spirit in past years, Christians have said it couldn’t possibly be God because they have never seen it happen before. Well, that’s the funny thing about God, He is the Creator, and He likes to do new things. He likes to break out of the neat little box we’ve packaged him up in and to surprise us!
Most things that happen in the New Testament hadn’t happened before. The Day of Pentecost; Jesus healing the blind and lame; people being healed by the disciple’s shadows… it was all brand new and surprising. Be careful not to miss what God is doing.
Even the language of this passage is suggesting surprise! It springs up! Just when you least expect it. When you’d given up hope. When you thought your prayers were going unanswered.
God often waits until the last minute, but then He surprises us. The answer you are waiting for is about to spring up and brings streams bursting through the wastelands in your life and force a way through that wilderness you thought was dead.
Forget the former things. Forget what has gone before, because holding onto the past is stopping us from fully receiving what God wants to do now. It is stopping us from recognising what God is doing, and from receiving all the amazing blessings God has for us right now!
Many blessings, Emma x