Monday 17 September 2012

Rosh Hoshanah

Shana Tova!  Happy New Year!

On this day the nation of Israel celebrates the start of the New Year.  For God’s people living in the time of the Old Testament they would blow the trumpets (made from a ram’s horn) and would declare the beginning of a new season. Hence, in certain places in the Bible this is referred to as the Feast of Trumpets.  The trumpet is a prophet instrument, and the only ones we actually see the angels using in the heavens.  It is used to announce a divine event.

We believe that today is not only a day to commemorate the beginning of a new Biblical year; it is also the day to declare a new beginning in our personal lives.  We can each appropriate this grace from heaven and “turn the page” on the events of last year.  I am sure that there are some things that you went through last year that you really would like to leave behind.  This is the time to “empty the emotional suitcase” in the presence of God.  It is a time that He has chosen to give His people grace to start afresh.  Whether you have just completed 12 very positive months, or 12 very negative months, Rosh Hashanah is a time for all of us to start a new season.

Our local church, here in the Paris area, is sensing that a new season of God is upon us.  This is our tenth Daniel Fast, and we sense more now than at any other time that the Spirit of God is bringing the entire body of Christ into a very new and exciting season of His grace.  There is a move of His Spirit across the earth; He is awakening the hearts to His love and to His purposes.

So today, we sound the prophetic trumpet of the God of Israel, the God of covenant, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and declare to all the peoples: New Year, New Season, New Grace, New Glory.  We take a step of faith, now, into the new season of God.  We appropriate, by faith, the graces of God for this time.  And we say, “Come Lord Jesus; come.”

As we take a step into the new season of God, we must leave behind those things in the past season.  We have all experienced good times in the past twelve months, just as we have experienced painful moments.  We have had our failures; and we have had our successes.  We want to encourage you to take some time today and make a short list of your failures and your successes of this past year.  What were the highlights – good and bad?

It is important that we leave behind our successes as well as our failures.  There are new challenges ahead and for these we need to take hold of new graces from God.  Christians who drag their old successes into the new season usually only build monuments to the old rather than building momentum for the new!  Since we want to press ahead into all that the Lord has for us in this new season we must leave everything behind – both the good and the bad.

Father, today we thank you for Your grace and Your glory.  And today we purposefully take a step of faith into Your new season for us.  Amen.