Listening to Jesus

It goes without saying that the New Year is a time of new beginnings, and the fact that it is a new year gives us hope that things may be different.  We play along with this and dutifully make New Year resolutions that very soon get broken, often because they are unrealistic and we can’t hope to manage them on our own!
 
One year, I remember feeling quite proud of my resolutions, only to hear a Bishop speak soon afterwards about how any New Year resolution that didn’t involve a resolve to know Jesus more wasn’t really worth making!
 
The journey we are all on is to be transformed by Jesus – to become the people he created us to be.  So rather than seeking to make our own New Year resolutions, wouldn’t it be better to spend a few moments trying to catch his heart for us in this New Year?
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​A central part of encounterprayer is when we meet with Jesus, share our heart with him, and then ask him to respond to us.  Yet many of us are notoriously bad at doing this!  We love his presence and bringing our requests to him, yet we forget to allow time to listen to him, or assume that we won’t hear him anyway!  It may even be that we’re frightened of letting him speak to us through fear of what he might say – after all, we have a pretty good idea what we would say if we were God!
First then, let’s remind ourselves of the confidence that John revealed in his first letter: ‘We know and rely on the love God has for us’ (1 John 4.16).  To rely on God’s love is to trust his word, that he will speak words of encouragement and empowerment to us and not words to condemn and knock us down.  In fact, perhaps this very point could be a wonderful New Year resolution – that we will trust the loving heart of God as we incline our ear to listen to him.

‘We know and rely on the love God has for us’
May you all have a happy and blessed New Year as you find again the joy of knowing and relying on God’s love for you.
 
John Ryeland
is part of The Christian Healing Mission

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© The Christian Healing Mission and The Revd John Ryeland, [2012-2019]. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from the author and/or chm is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to The Revd John Ryeland with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.