So it’s another new year. We look forward to the new year with anticipation and hope. We think of all the good that we would like to have happen to us in this coming year. We might be ambitious and self-motivated to set some new goals for the new year and resolve to invest ourselves in striving for these goals. You might put your faith in God to work and ask Him to bless you and help you achieve your new goals.
Isn’t this how most of us go to God in prayer? We ask God to do things for us, to bless our plans. I think we need to turn that approach on its head, like President John F. Kennedy did in his famous admonition, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” And so each of us should ask God, “What can I do for you, Lord? What do you want me to do, my Lord?”
We need to be audacious in asking God what He wants us to do for Him. Like George Bailey asking his new girlfriend, Mary, in the movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life”: “What is it you want, Mary? What do you want? You want the moon? Just say the word and I’ll throw a lasso around it and pull it down.” We need to be prepared to do big things, because God is big and He thinks big. Sometimes He may give us a big opportunity, but it may seem small to us because we can’t begin to imagine what He has in store. As 1 Corinthians 2:9 says, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has conceived the things God has prepared for those who love him.” We may have always thought of these “things” God has prepared for us as rewards, as things He will do for us, but instead might they be the things He has in store for us to do?
We need to be devoted to giving our life away. We have to give our life away. It’s not ours to keep. We are given the abundant life Jesus told us He came to give us when we tell Him we are ready to give it away. Jesus fills us with His love until it overflows and we can’t do anything but give it away by giving our lives back to Him for His use.
So as we enter this new year, ask not what can God do for me but what can I do for God. To make it more specific, ask not what can my church do for me but what can I do for my church. Seek God’s leading, ask Him what He has in store for you, and, whether it seems small or large to you, know that anything God prepares for you to do will have eternal consequences beyond anything you can imagine. And so, let God prepare you to give your all, and be prepared to lasso the moon.