Having a great week and response to our fasts! You can read the Daniel Fast post here. There will be more upcoming posts on The Daniel Fast very soon! The Negativity Fast is in full swing! Even though I failed and stumbled some yesterday I am not giving up! You can read about the challenge here. Won’t you join me?

Thank you all for a wonderful nine months here at Hope in the Healing. What a journey it has been! I am in awe of the blessing God has given me in YOU, all of YOU have been an encouragement to me and I pray you have found something here at some time that has been a help or a blessing to you. Let’s join together for a New Year of great things in God!

It’s here. Some of you have longed for it. Many of you have prayed for it. Others were counting the days until 2013 walked out the door.

It was a tough year for you. Whether it was your finances, your employment, or lack of it, your family situation, or insert the issue here _______, it seems almost everyone was ready to help poor old Number 13 become just another page in the history books.

So now what? Fresh Start? You bet! We all look forward to it! We have those New Year’s Resolutions!

It is said that a New Year’s Resolution is something that goes in one YEAR and out the other!

Let’s see, we are going to lose weight. Of course we are, we do every year at this time.

We are going to go to the gym every day and eat right all year long. Ahem.

We are going to read our Bible, pray every day and we will grow, grow, grow…another good resolution.

How about saving money? A great one!

Maybe your resolution is to heal some past hurts? Follow through!

There is absolutely nothing wrong with making resolutions, it is good to have goals. Hopefully we will even attain some of them this year.

How about we LET GO of some things this year? That is what I heard quite a bit of last night in our Watch Night service.

Paul is talking to the Philippian church when he says these famous words: “…forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”

Right before that he told them about “those things” that were “behind”. Paul had a past. He had things that the enemy liked to throw in his face and to remind him over and over again of his unworthiness.

Does he do that to you too? I’ve been there. I carried guilt over the big and the little. So did Paul!

But he told the Philippians to rejoice in the Lord and to beware of “evil workers” and those that caused trouble, those that like to remind you of your past.

“If anyone else thinks he may have confidence in the flesh, I more so: circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; concerning the law, a Pharisee;  concerning zeal, persecuting the church; concerning the righteousness which is in the law, blameless.”

Paul wasn’t perfect, in fact he was a persecutor of the church! He went around and gathered up Christians and put them in prison!

When the Lord blinded him on the road to Damascus, got his attention and called him to take the Gospel to the world, Paul never looked back. He was telling us if God could use him, he could use anyone, and nothing else was as important to him any longer as getting the message out that Jesus saves!

“But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ.” Philippians 3:7 NKJV.

So what are you going to leave behind? What does the devil hold over your head that plagued you all through 2013?

If there is sin in your life then most certainly that has to be dealt with, repent and ask for forgiveness. Repentance is not just saying, “I am sorry” and then going and repeating the sin over and over. It is asking for forgiveness and then TURNING AROUND and walking away!

But after forgiveness, God forgets! Guilt comes from the enemy, he is the expert with putting things in your mind and reminding you of your past.

Let it go. Remember, as far as the east is from the west, God has forgiven you! You can read my post on “If God Has Forgiven Me, Why Can’t I Forgive Myself?” here for more on that subject.

Who knows that this could be the year Jesus returns for His people! We cannot let the enemy deceive us and keep us continually worried over things that have already been forgiven and dealt with when we have a work to do.

Forgetting what is behind….pressing toward the mark. Make 2014 the year you walk in victory with God!

The Best Is Yet To Come!