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Amanda Henderlight

January 25, 2025

Isaiah 43:19, New Living Standard

“For I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun! Do you not see it? I will make a pathway through the wilderness. I will create rivers in the dry wasteland.”

 

God gave me the word “new” for a devotion I was working on recently.

As I began looking at the new beginnings, I was in awe of what He would show me in and through this devotional study. You see, we all look forward to new beginnings each year at the New Year. Many of us are eager for a fresh start after such a tough year– or even a sequence of tough years that lay behind us.

 

God gave me comfort in such an odd way as I read that new beginnings are not free of the tough hard endings that lead to them.


The greatest true-life story of new beginnings to ever be told was that of Jesus. Even the horrible pain and agony of Christ dying on the cross, the story doesn’t end at His death but at the greatest new start story of all time. Though He was beaten, bruised, mocked and made fun of, the new beginnings come from His forgiveness and the blood shed at the foot of the cross. Even with such heartache and pain He died so that we could live. Such a powerful true story of new beginnings!


Here are some other new beginnings in the Bible:

Esther rescued her people and risked her life. Scripture in the book of Esther told us. She risked her own death at the heart of following God's call on her life. She would go before the king risking horrible death and yet because she followed God's lead, she was able for “such a time as this” to rescue the Jewish people as well as herself.


Moses began as a baby destined for death and yet was rescued by the Pharaoh’s very own daughter. The pharaoh was killing babies such as Moses. And yet not only was he rescued and raised within palace walls, but he was also the one God would call to lead the Israelites to freedom and a new start.


Noah and his family found a new start riding out on the ark and left behind their community extended family and anyone else who refused to join. Alone and shook upon the waves within an ark during a time where no man had seen rain before. And all in a part of God's perfectly formed plan to rid the world of sin and wipe it free. They would go from rough waters alone with only God and the animals on a ship to replenishing and fresh starts once again on earth. All with the promise of God to never completely flood the earth again.


Daniel’s destiny was to follow God wherever He had led and it led him to praying knowingly– and in spite of the king’s edict. He landed in a den of lions with the plan to kill him, and yet he had lived to tell the story and bring an entire kingdom back to God in and through it.


Shadrack, Meshack and Abednego refused to bow before the king and stated that even if God did not rescue them, still they would follow. Into the fiery furnace they had gone, and yet again they weren’t alone. Daniel 3:19-25 states there was a fourth man in the fire, meaning God himself went before in and through that fire with them providing a hedge of protection where not an odor would be smelled, or a hair singed, even when the fire was heated four times higher! The new beginning allowed them to not only safely follow God in a promoted role, but took a king and his entire kingdom before God on bended knees! So in saying, I have learned that God’s call and His new beginnings often follow some of the hardest endings. When we follow Him faithfully the rewards and blessings far exceed any the heart or mind could begin to imagine or think!

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