A New Creation of Joy

          Have you had your Joy Juice today?  The New Year is here! Let’s pray that it will be time of new beginnings and new joy.

            2 Corinthians 5:17 (NIV) says:  “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”

            

            In the context of 2016, the old year is gone and the New Year, 2017, is here. We should pray for a new beginning and blessed New Year.  But that’s not what this verse is talking about.  If we want to be a “new creation”, we must believe and have faith “in Christ”.  Accepting Christ as Lord of every area of our life is the path to becoming a new creation.  We must be willing to allow God to change us, to guide us, to help us make wise decisions….and to leave the “old life” behind.

            We won’t look different on the outside, but we will know we are different on the inside. Others will recognize the change because of the way we act and react.  God’s new creation is a thing of beauty…a masterpiece that no man could design.  That reminds me of the verse in Isaiah 64:8:

“Yet, you, LORD, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.”

           Take one step at a time into this new year; let God lead you and mold you into a new creation of joy.