Today brings to a close another year. Tomorrow we begin a new year with new opportunities and new experiences. How will we know what to do? Where will we get the proper guidance for making God-honoring choices from the first moment of the year to the last? J. I. Packer discusses the issue of God’s guidance toward us and how God’s promise to us is a blessing:
…it appears that the right context for discussing guidance is one of confidence in the God who will not let us ruin our souls. Our concern, therefore, in this discussion should be more for His glory than for our security — for that is already taken care of.
Guidance, like all God’s acts of blessing under the covenant of grace, is a sovereign act. Not merely does God will to guide us in the sense of showing us His way, that we may tread it; He wills also to guide us in the more fundamental sense of ensuring that, whatever happens, whatever mistakes we may make, we shall come safely home. Slippings and strayings there will be, no doubt, but the everlasting arms are beneath us; we shall be caught, rescued, restored. This is God’s promise; this is how good He is.
–J. I. Packer
How wonderful to remember this truth as we move into a brand new year… That God is so good that as He guides us this year, even if we slip and stray from His guidance, He will bring us safely home if we are His children! His strong and mighty arms are beneath us and He will catch us when we fall to rescue and and restore us back on His path.
Do your very best to try to follow God’s guidance throughout 2016, but when you find that you’ve missed the mark, realize His grace still covers you and He still loves you and wants to put you back on the right path. Repent of errors, and once again make the choice to always do the next right thing!