Happy New Year 2016

For the past couple of weeks, the words "Happy New Year" have been heard across the globe.  The celebration has been building, as the world anticipates the hope of a New Year.  Really, what people are excited about, is a fresh start, a new beginning, another chance to get it right.  The resolutions have been decided, the commitments have been made, but there's one sad fact that won't escape my mind...that in one or two months from now, many of those commitments will be broken.

Millions of people will fall back into the same patterns of life, that they've lived for decades.  This false hope will become another disappointment for many.  I write this, not to condemn anyone, because I am in the line of the guilty!  What I have described above, is my sad story too.  Your commitments have been my commitments and just the same I have failed.  Rather, I write this with another thought in mind.  A thought that will bring you true hope and real victory.  The hope that comes from not just settling for a new year, but I want you to have a new life!

Yesterday, I was working out at the gym.  I noticed many new people were there, filling out their new member applications, taking their tour of the gym, etc.  They have a hope that in 2016 they will get fit, they will lose weight, they will get stronger and they will change.  I noticed several posts on Facebook, where people were declaring what they were going to change, in 2016.  I also noticed several post that said, 2016 was going to be a better year than 2015.  I hope that statement is true, as much as anyone.  However, I realize that just because the clock strikes midnight and the annual calendar changes, that nothing will magically happen!  The New Year isn't a genie bottle, granting our every wish!

I left the gym with a sadness in my heart.  Usually, when that happens the Lord is trying to speak something to me.  I began to pray on my car ride home and the Lord spoke to me.  He said, "I don't want to just give a New Year, I want to give a NEW LIFE!"  He said, I don't want to just make people fit or take away a lifelong, bad habit, I want to make ALL THINGS NEW!  I want people to put their hope in me, not in the calendar changing!  I want people to rejoice in Salvation, not in the clock striking midnight!

I remember the day like yesterday...It was January 17, 1997.  The day that I found myself at the end of my rope.  I had just went through the New Year tradition a few days prior.  My expectations were high!  I was sure that 1997 would be the best year ever!  I wasn't sure why, but I just knew it would be.  Like everyone else, I had hope in the new year!  I knew that the previous trials and pain of life had to go away, eventually.  It couldn't possibly get any worse, it had to get better!  Isn't that really what the world thinks, every New Year's Eve?

Then, seventeen days later it happened....things got worse, things got much worse.  I was in and out of jail, strung out on drugs and alcohol, practically homeless, couldn't keep a job, couldn't pay my bills, etc.  At just 19 years old, I was at my lowest point in life.  I lost all ambition to go on another day.  I accepted the fact that I was destined for failure.  I would never make anything of my life and I would always be this way.  As much as I wanted to deny this, it was a reality in my life that my mind couldn't escape.

Then one day, as I sat on a cot in the county jail, a man came to visit me.  He was a local pastor in the area.  His name was Pete Cittadino and he was the local chaplain for the county jail.  Pete has since went on to be with the Lord, but week after week, he would wheel his wheel chair into that county jail and share the gospel with me.  I wonder what Pete is thinking now, as he looks down from Heaven.  I wonder if he got a crown for this once lost sinner, who he led to the Lord.  I sure hope so...

I was just hoping to get out of the "block" and talk to someone who might understand my problems.  I wanted hope.  I wanted to talk to someone who could tell me it would all be okay.  I didn't want to live like this, but addiction had me.  It wouldn't let go, as hard as I tried to escape its merciless grasp.  It had such a grip on me.  I wanted to hear someone tell me that I would make it, so I went to the church service, there in the jail.

In all honesty, I never was much of a church person.  It wasn't that I didn't believe in God, but he just wasn't of interest to me.  I thought all church people were judgmental, hypocrites, and self righteous.  Honestly, I thought church was just plain weird.  But, I went to listen to this man anyway....

As I sat in the service, drifting off, bored out of my mind, I heard him say something.  Something that made my ears perk like antennas.  Something that I knew I needed to hear him say again.  Something that gave me HOPE!  He said these words, "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation.  The old has passed away, behold, all things have become new!"  I'll never forget how those words pierced me.  I'll never forget the feeling that ran through every ounce of my body.  

I pulled him aside and I said to him, "Pastor Pete, is that verse you just shared really true?  If so, how can it be?  How do all things become new?  How do the old things pass away?  It sounds to good to be true, pastor."  He looked at me with full confidence and said, "I know it sounds to good to be true, Jimmy, but it's the word of God and it really is true."  I replied, "I want to be new, I'm sick of living like this.  I'm sick of drugs, I'm sick of jail, I'm sick of being hopeless.  How do I get this new life?"  He responded, "You must be born again, you must be IN CHRIST."

If I were to be honest, I had no clue what that meant, but as desperate as I was, I had nothing to lose.  I said, Pastor Pete, I want a new life.  I want to become NEW!  Please help me!  Right there, he grabbed my hands and prayed for me.  I invited Jesus into my heart that day and I asked him to forgive me.  I confessed my failures and my weaknesses.  I was truly sorry...I was truly repentant.  With hands up...I surrendered and crowned him as Lord.

For the next few days, something was happening to me.  I couldn't stop crying.  I literally cried for 3 days straight.  I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep, I would just cry in my cell.  I was being washed clean by the Spirit of God.  I was being made new!  The old was streaming out, down my cheeks.  Every hurt, every failure, every addiction, every generational curse, every broken dream, every act the enemy tried to destroy me with.  I was falling in love with Jesus, right there on that cot.  I felt such gratitude in my heart, I couldn't believe that this could be true.  I couldn't believe that I could start over.  I couldn't believe that he took the punishment for every one of my sins and I could go free.  Again, it didn't make sense, but I knew it was true.  I believed it in the very depth of my soul.  For the first time, I had real hope!

From that day forward, my life slowly began to change and I've never looked back.  I've hit some bumps along the way, I've fallen down, but thanks be to God, he gave me strength to get back up every time!  

Here I am today, almost 20 years later.  Once a drug addict, now a preacher!  Once a lonely man, now surrounded by the joyous sounds of a family.  Once a broken man, now like Pastor Pete, sharing the good news of salvation to the ends of the earth.  Once an unreliable, irresponsible employee, now the VP of a very successful business that funds our ministry.  How could this be?  How did this happen?  I don't understand even to this day, but I received NEW LIFE because of the grace of God!  I accept it, because he died so I could have it.  He died so you could have it...will you accept it tonight wherever you are? 

Here's my point...The New Year is just another day.  Let me encourage you to make a resolution that will stick.  A resolution that is the only real resolution.  Make a resolution today to surrender to Jesus.  Let him make you new!  Surrender the past, so he can begin to rebuild your life.  He longs for your response.  He's waiting and eager to give you eternal life.  He's eager to give you abundant life!  I'm a living example that he really does make ALL THINGS NEW!  Not some things, ALL THINGS!

So today, if you receive this, I want to wish you a Happy New Life!  2016 and beyond will be your best days.  Please understand, I'm not saying you won't still have problems.  But I can tell you this, with integrity...what the enemy uses for evil, God will use for good.  Although, trials don't feel good in the moment they are producing something in us that will reveal the glory of God.  He will burn away the dross and make us like pure gold.  Not for our sake, but for his ultimate glory!

God bless you all!  May the joy of the Lord visit you through salvation today!

Jesus says to you today, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me."

Open the door now...

In Jesus name,

Jimmy