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January is a time of renewal. Many set New Years resolutions, half-heartedly at least, in hope of improving the mistakes they’ve made. Others set goals in order to improve themselves; looking at the coming year with plans to do better and to be better. The need to improve is driven from the typical questions we ask ourselves:

Am I satisfied with the life I’m living? Do I have everything I want? Am I where I thought I would be at this point in my life? Is there more to life than what I have right now?

Many times we just live day to day, week to week, and let life unfold before us. Attempting to improve this or that. Then periodically we look at the life we are living and wonder, “Is there more”?

We wonder what happened to the hopes we had, the hopes of what we thought we could achieve, the hopes of our youth where anything looked possible.

It’s at this point in our life where we tell ourselves it wasn’t meant to be or that life just happened and got in the way of all the aspirations that we had. Or perhaps you achieved the desires you wished for and yet something still isn’t right, something is missing from what is supposed to be the perfect life.

We are meant to hope and have faith in what is yet to come into our lives. We are meant to long for a better life. So what’s missing?

Perhaps it is the source of those hopes. For those of us who believe that Jesus is the Lord of our lives, this answer should be pretty simple. But sometimes we get in the way, sometimes we don’t live like he is Lord of our lives. Let’s examine ourselves using God’s Word.

But if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won’t know what we’re talking about. But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells – even though you still experience all the limitations of sin – you yourself experience life on God’s terms. It stands to reason, doesn’t it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he’ll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ’s!

Romans 8:9-11 (The Message Bible)

Wow! We do tend to make everything about ourselves instead of Christ. When we contemplate that the same power that raised Jesus from the dead resides inside of us, then anything can happen! We need to ensure this kind of power is active in our lives. If we want to experience life on God’s terms, let’s consider what God has to say about our lives.

So if you’re serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. Don’t shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up, and be alert to what is going on around Christ – that’s where the action is. See things from his perspective. Your old life is dead. Your new life, which is your real life – even though invisible to spectators – is with Christ in God. He is your life.

Colossians 3:1-3 (The Message Bible)

Maybe that’s why we haven’t realized all that we wished for in our lives or perhaps that is why our aspirations still leave us feeling unfulfilled. We haven’t considered them through the eyes of Christ. Our lives can often be too much about ourselves and not enough about Jesus. Take a new look at your life and the life you’re leading; look at it with new eyes through Christ. What does he see in your life and what does he see as your future?

In the last days, God says,

I will pour my spirit out on all people.

Your sons and daughters will prophesy,

your young men will see visions,

your old men will dream dreams.

Acts 2:17 (NIV)

Remember that feeling from our youth that anything is possible, that we can achieve anything we put our minds to. That is still true if we are looking through the eyes of Christ. Anything is possible! Let the Lord fill you with visions and dreams of what he can achieve through you.

And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

Hebrews 11:6 (NIV)

When we seek God he says he will reward us because we are seeking his will in our lives. Our hopes will come to fruition when they are based on who God is, on who and what he wants in our lives, and what we are willing to allow him to achieve through us.

Are you willing to allow God to reveal his dreams through you?

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