Fearlessly Courageous
Desk of Dennis Piller
1 15 2024

Audio Version

Are you too set in your ways to change?

How much can we learn from a heart of generosity and thankfulness? Isn’t that a habit you could wholeheartedly embrace for this new year that Christ has asked you to create? Wherever your life is…
what are you thankful for?   There must be 2 or three things or people that fit that bill.  What are they? 
Psalm 107:1 says, – Start each day with a grateful heart.

Yes, Praise and thanksgiving change our perspective, and puts challenges in perspective, as we focus our mind on Jesus… that in turn strengthens our faith and allows us to combat the ugly spiritual forces that are heaving the arrows at us.  They  allow us to create-plan-and envision what
we can do to serve God and give ourselves away to others. 
In that comes a spirit of dreaming about some great things you might do…
about what God can do through you? When was the last time you really dreamed Big?
What is your hope? Health? Family?  Marriage?  Relationships?  Career?  What is your big desire and ask of God this year?  I think love begins with praise and thanksgiving.

Are you not curious? And if you let yourself free fall into faith…the excitement will start to rise within you like the updraft at the top of a high summit.  The questions we ask is: 
Do I dare step out and let his spirit take over and lift me up beyond the imaginable?
The question is do you have the faith to believe for something big… do you have the spiritual audacity to see what can be? Just thinking about it gets me excited, for you.

Who’s leading do you think that is? What seeds of hope and faith can you envision
that need and await your planting and your believing? 

I know we just finished an 8 part series on Goal Setting.  I want to move on from that but I can’t move on from Believing God has some big plans for me and you in the new year.  Jeremiah 29:11  If you only have one big wish… Or dream… I’m Ok with that. 

“But it’s past time for you to release your faith…in essence, planting your seed of faith and expecting God to show up.  1 Corinthians 3:6, says, “I planted the seed in your hearts, and Apollo watered it, but it was God who made it grow”.  It isn’t important who plants or waters but rather God makes it grow. This is saying that believers, you and  I, are God’s plantation and that Paul was a helper. Maybe I am your helper today to encourage you, motivate you, to take a small step forward  to help you plant your own seed of faith.  I don’t care what hasn’t worked in the past, neither does God.  He doesn’t live there.  Nor the answers you haven’t received.  God is doing a new thing.  Can’t you see it…feel it…  I know there is a spark of faith, and that tiny seed is all you need to take it all.

Isaiah 43:19, reads, “Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert”.  Isn’t that something praiseworthy?   Isn’t hope something to celebrate?

Isiah 43:16 says, God will make a way through the seas and a path through the mighty waters”.  That was not just a word for them but for you and me.  Take it…  run with it… Believe that he is faithful and just to forgive us our past sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness 1 John 1:9 explains that repentance is simply realigning to the truth of God.  Getting on his track and off our old track. Leaving the past behind.  Decluttering to make room for God’s word and God’s promises.

This is not my invitation…It is a divine invitation to witness the work God can and will do for you.  
The word “New” in Hebrew means fresh, unprecedented. 
But here’s the exciting part of encouragement!   “forget the former things; do not dwell on the past”. 
Or Ephesians 3:20 ““Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us.”

In you my friends IS the Hope of Glory…and you are just a seed away.  I don’t want you believing in you and how you’ve fallen down in the past..  He says pay NO attention to the things of old. 

God is a God of new beginnings.  He is doing new things every day..  How many cells do we regenerate every day in our bodies, eyes, and organs?   We have new days, years and centuries.  We have new challenges; opportunities and we have NEW life in Christ Jesus our Lord who has promises to make all things new.  Rev 21:5

We can sit at the old door and pound on it.  We can do the old college camp out and pitch a tent in protest.  But God’s no’s are often his ways to redirect us to something new.   We have the tendency of wanting to hold onto the known and comfortable…easy street. (Even when it isn’t good for us!) But he repeatedly says…again and again…Let go of the old…embrace the world of possibilities in front of you.  Trust God.  Or we will lie in stagnancy and wither and grow senile and short tempered and grumpier than the Grumpier Old Men movie.  He Wants To Do It!…in you…through you.  LET HIM!  BELIEVE IN HIM!

Maybe you’ve been going through a testing season.  You may have been enduring a long and lonely road of disappointments.   But he also led the children of Israel from Egypt on a long and hot road to strengthen and prepare them for the new things ahead.  Jerusalem! 
They failed their test!  They held onto the old and even cried to return to Egypt. 
We cannot let that be our story. 

He has stirred something in you…I know it.  What is it?  What dream?  What inkling is bubbling up?  Pursue it…pray it through and in your attitude of praise and thanksgiving for all He has done for you…
He will open your eyes to the New of the New Year…. Just for you.