Welcome back to all of our listeners! I’m BJ Sipe, and you’re listening to the Set Your Mind Above podcast – where everyday ordinary events teach us extraordinary eternal truths. I’m so glad that you’ve tuned in today, I am excited to share my life and my faith with you, and I sure hope that you’ll do the same with me along the way.
I don’t know about you, but I am having a hard time wrapping my brain around the fact tonight is New Year’s Eve, and that tomorrow is the start of the year 2022. I look back at my life and I can remember vividly in great detail each passing New Year, and somewhere along the way they started to stack up. Maybe you’re like me and part of you still thinks that it’s 2020, much less 2021, when all of the difficulties surrounding Covid first began. It’s been a long few years for so many people that I know and love. I sat in my car sipping my cup of coffee before coming back into my office to work on this podcast, and I was prayerfully thinking about everyone who I know is looking forward to this New Year & a fresh start. I know churches that have faced unspeakable heartbreak and division over the past year, who are looking to this new year for peace and healing. I know of people whose marriages have dissolved, and they are looking to this new year to rediscover themselves and who they are supposed to be now. I know of people who have spent countless hours & incredible amounts of money in court to fight battles against wicked & despicable acts, who now look to this new year for resolution & peace. I know of people who have been burdened with great health issues that look forward to this new year for a cure, some relief, or just some answers. The more I sat and thought about it, the more I realized how hard of a year this has been for so many people that I know and love. I think Ben Rector captures well what many of us are feeling, “It’s been the kind of year I’d be fine if I forgot…but I’ll never forget it as long as I live and that’s saying a lot.” Well, today’s podcast is going to start out with some bad news, and then end with some good news. As people, we long for new beginnings, don’t we? We look forward to the New Year with great expectations of a better future. We see it as some sort of a reset button, a clean break away from all the bad of the past year to move on to bigger and better things. While this is certainly possible regarding things that are within our control, the nature of life is that many of the things that have made this past year so hard for so many have been completely outside of their control. You cannot change that which you do not have control over. Go back in your memory with me to the end of the year 2020…how many people thought that 2021 was going to be the best year yet? That they were going to put all of their troubles behind them and have the best year of their lives? Well…it didn’t quite happen like we had hoped, did it? And if we are being honest with ourselves, maybe our expectations for 2022 need to be reeled in a little bit as well. While it certainly is a new year, while we are living in this broken and sinful world there are always going to be the same old problems. Sickness does not suddenly end with the first new year’s sunrise. Relationships are not magically mended after the ball drops. Churches do not suddenly find unity they never before had because they coasted into a new calendar year. This is the hard truth: all of the problems and struggles you have had this past year, many of them will also be present in this new one. I know, that is not the news that you wanted to hear, but whether we want to hear it or not, it is the truth.
But that is not the only thing which is true. You see, we do long for new beginnings – but the one we are truly seeking cannot be found in a new year now, but rather one day when God makes all things new. There are perhaps not any more beautiful words recorded in all of Scripture than that of Revelation 21:1-5, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” I struggle to find words to describe my emotions as I think about this day that will be realized for all of us who have named Christ as our Lord. The day that finally we will deal with no more sickness. The day that finally we will deal with no more sin. The day that we finally will deal with no more division, or despair, or death. There will be no more enemy, for we will live forever in victory with our Savior Jesus Christ. The newness that you seek will never be realized here on this earth…but it will be in the life to come. And it will be instantaneous too. Faster than you can rip the page off of your calendar, when Jesus returns to take us home each of us will be changed in an instant. Paul writes, “I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.” (1 Corinthians 15:50-53) My friends, I cannot promise you that this new year will be any better than the last. I cannot promise you that all of your problems will be resolved and that you can finally move forward unburdened in your life in the year 2022. But I can promise you this…the best is yet to come. Hold fast to your hope and to your faith, because one day Jesus is going to come back and bring us home where everything will be right, and whole, and true. You will finally have rest, finally have peace, never again to see the pains that come with this life. What a beautiful & glorious day that will be.
To all of my listeners, thank you from the bottom of my heart for making this past year so special. I want to invite you back to continue tuning in to the Set Your Mind Above Podcast in 2022, and encourage you to invite others to join us in this journey as well. Until next year, know that I love you, that God loves you, and may we all each and every day set our minds above.