2013

Three days into 2013 and I'm excited, expectant, and grateful for where God has led me and for where He is going to lead me. For many of you, the last year was a time of joy or pain. We all have different experiences, different memories, and different emotions that went along with 2012. They have shaped or molded us into the person we are right now. Pastor Channock Banet said it perfectly this past weekend at Cornerstone Church. As he was recapping 2012, with the joys and pains that went along with it, he said, "Let's not let the memorial of 2012 become a monument that we camp under." That's a pretty awesome statement, yet a serious warning! Regardless of what you experienced this past year, it can keep you from growing and enjoying what God has for you right now. Whether it was a great year or the worst year of your life, you have a choice. You can either set up shop in the joyful or painful memories of 2012, living captive to moments; or you can take whatever circumstances you experienced and use them as motivation or momentum to carry out what God wants to do in and through you this year!

With God's amazing grace and love, we are capable of making a huge impact for the Gospel. God's grace covers you but it then produces faith. Faith requires responsibility and your responsibility is to live like Jesus lived (1 John 2:6). Not under shame or the feeling that you have to earn God's grace through obedience. But under the realization that God is in fact proud of you, loves you, and can do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us (Ephesians 3:20). When your focus is Jesus, sin is diminished. As a pastor once said, "I want to be known as someone who walks out of the Bible, not out of the Bible belt." 2013 is going to be a year of breakthrough and Jesus is going to get all the glory.