Last year at this time if you asked me how I was feeling about prayer in general, and I was to be completely honest with you, I would have had to say I was a bit jaded.

Not that I doubted the power of prayer, God’s ability to thoroughly answer prayer, or if I should pray.  In fact, He was answering a decade worth of prayers in powerful ways… it was just in a much more brutal, exhausting way then I had pictured when I was laying out my requests before Him.  I could feel His hand but it didn’t feel gentle.

I got to a point where I felt like praying coincided with me cowering.  My confidence in the Holy Spirit’s leading was shaky and I finally began asking God to help me want to pray again.

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I’m not a New Year’s person.  I think it’s because it always annoyed me that I’m supposed to somehow have a sense of fresh start just because the calendar changes.  For the same reason, New Year’s resolutions always bothered me.  I think January 1 is a lousy time to be resolute.  For me, a natural time to set new goals and embark on a new challenge would be in the Spring when the days are getting longer and energy returns to those of us Vitamin D deprived.  Another appropriate time for a clean slate is September when we kick into school gear and get scheduled.

In fact, for a few years I stopped working out for much of January.  The gym is always over crowded.  By February it tends to drop off again, feeding my eye rolling.

I did however, realize that my New Years cynicism was overboard when last year S. told me the reason he never makes New Year’s resolutions is the fear of me mocking him.  Oops.  I then made my first New Year’s resolution to not make fun of New Year’s resolutions.  (That being said, don’t feel like you have to hide your resolutions from me.  I’m cheering you on in your weight losing/ discipline gaining/ less facebooking/ waking up earlier selves.  Really.)

The slightly comical irony is that the New Year really feels like a new year for 2012 and it’s all starting today- January 1.  I shouldn’t be surprised.  Often the Lord seems to give my life these little twists so that I eat my cynicism.

Last year a verse kept coming back to me in my Isaiah study:
“Behold, I will do a new thing, now it shall spring forth; shall you not know it?  I will even make a road in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”  Isaiah 43:19
I know that God is talking about releasing Israel from captivity and rebuilding them as a nation, but I kept feeling like God was giving me this verse, too.

Today I see God making roads in our wilderness and giving us rivers in what was desert.  January 1 marks the first day of S. as Associate Pastor in addition to his work with BIG OAK.  He’s bringing in the New Year by preaching three services about how God’s promises give us hope and how we actively pursue hope by knowing and obeying the Word.  Monday and Tuesday nights he will be training leaders in preparation for youth ministry starting later this month.  We’re jumping in the deep end of the pool and it’s exciting and refreshing.

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