New Beginnings, Day 13 Choices. Read Genesis chapter 13. Abram and lot were too big to stay together. Abram allowed Lot to have his choice of the land. Lot went east, so Abram was heading west. Then the Lord interrupts and tells Abram that it doesn’t really matter because everything, north, south, east, and west will ultimately belong to his descendants. Lot wasn’t a descendant of Abram, and Abram knew that. But it didn’t matter that he chose land, God is still in control and God was giving it all to Abram. We can sometimes be very short-sighted. We see short-term decisions and forget that God is looking at his…

New Beginnings, Day 12 New Beginnings and Legacy. Read Genesis chapter 12. Abram definitely had a new beginning. God told him to leave everything he knew, take his family and move. God didn’t even tell him where until he got there. But then, God explained to him why he was moving him. God was going to give his family an entire new beginning and generations after him would be changed and impacted as a result of this new beginning. For me, ehen I’m looking at changes, so often I think about myself only. I think about the changes that I have to go through and the the plans for my…

New Beginnings, Day 11 God-imposed new beginning. Read Genesis chapter 11. The people have been following God’s command to cover the whole Earth with people. That is, until they stopped following God’s command to do that. A group of people got together and decided it would be fun to stay in one place and not go any farther. They decided to build a tower to recognize their great achievement. But the problem was, they were refusing to obey the command that God had given them. As a result, God came down, saw what they were doing, and realized he was going to have to intervene to get them back on…

New Beginnings, Day 10 Follow through. Read Genesis chapter 10. Yesterday, we saw the mandate that God gave Noah and his family. Today in this chapter, we see them following through on that mandate. The entire chapter is full of names of people that were moving out to fill the earth. Do we follow through? We get the commands from God, and often we start out going well, but then, do we continue? Do we follow all the way through the process? When God gives us commands, we should continue to ensure that we are following through and that our actions line up with God’s commands. Watch the video devotional…

New Beginnings, Day 9 The overwhelming blessing. Read Genesis chapter 9. As Noah and his family ended up back on dry land, God blessed them. I imagine that this blessing felt incredibly overwhelming to Noah and his family. As the only surviving human beings on the Earth, God’s blessing and command to them was to fill the Earth with people. This must have seemed like an impossible task, yet so often that is exactly how God blesses us. He shares with us a vision that is so much bigger than anything we could have ever hoped to accomplish on our own. God knows that in order for us to truly…

New Beginnings, Day 8 God remembered. Read Genesis chapter 8. New beginnings can feel very lonely sometimes. If you have truly left the things in the past, there’s always that time in between. That time before you have built new relationships, made those new connections, and started those new habits. During that time it’s easy to feel lonely. There’s a huge temptation to go back to what you were doing before because it was comfortable. I’m sure during this time of flooding that Noah felt lonely. As we we read here, God remembered Noah. While Noah may have felt alone, he was never truly alone. God was with him and…

New Beginnings, Day 7 The totality. Read Genesis chapter 7. In reading through this chapter, it’s hard to not be struck by the complete and utter totality by which the Earth is destroyed. Everything that breathed air died, except for what was placed carefully in the Ark by the Lord. When we think about new beginnings, we must understand that the old must die first. Sometimes that’s easy and we’re excited to get rid of the old and we don’t even have a second thought. Sometimes pieces of the old continue to try to live on and creep into the new beginning. God made it very clear for his new…

New Beginnings, Day 6 God’s new beginning. Read Genesis chapter 6. Here we see God making a decision to start over. The creation that he made was not acting the way he created them to act. They weren’t doing what they were created to do. They were not fulfilling their purpose. So, God made the decision to issue judgment. God decided to make a new beginning. Even in the midst of all of the disappointment and judgment, there was one man that God saw doing what was right. Based on Noah’s individual actions, God chose to save him. We can understand that God is going to judge each of us…

New Beginnings, Day 5 The likeness of God. Read Genesis chapter 5. This is an incredible list of the family line of Adam. We see his sons and their sons. We see how long they lived. We even see how God moved in the life of Enoch. Throughout, we remember this verse. God made us in his likeness. Our beginning starts with God. It doesn’t matter whether or not we agree or believe in him, we have to acknowledge that he is our beginning. View the video devotional here https://youtu.be/5RQD5TM-ygk

New Beginnings, Day 3 Starting over. Read Genesis chapter 3. Sometimes a new beginning is as the result of messing up. We must start over. Adam and Eve had to start over. They had sinned and God addressed their sin, but that didn’t change the fact that they had to begin again. When we sin, we have to come to God for repentance and we have to start over. We must allow God to move in us and cleanse us, then allow him to set us upon the new pathway that he has for us. Sometimes, as a result of our sin, we must change paths. God always has a…