New Year’s Day.

I am thinking about a poster I photographed on my camera phone, which read, “Do something today which your future self will thank you for.”  I posted that picture on social media and subsequently deleted it from my storage…but I have thought of it often in the year or two since then.

Your future self.

Sometimes it’s difficult to think of yourself as anything except “what” or “who” or even “where” you are, right now – and the details of that identity probably involve considerable time and energy to fulfill the routine and responsibility that is attached.

I certainly fit that category.  But I know there is “more to me” than what I currently see and express, because there is “more of Him in me” that is constantly seeking to be released.

Envisioning my “future self” can be a tangible motivation to seek my heavenly Father and ask His participation in bringing me to those steps, that growth, training, discipline and focus necessary to “being transformed into the same image from glory to glory.” (2 Cor. 3:18)

The “same image,” of course, is His – “Beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord.”  But He chooses our individual and unique flavor of “the glory of God” to tangibly display His amazing, multifaceted love, mercy and transformative power to the world and populations He loves.

New Year’s Day is a fitting time to take a few minutes and think about that concept.  Of the many tasks and engagements involving you, right now – which of them touch others with His Presence or cooperate with Him to develop those giftings, opportunities, assignments He has for each of us?  Which are those activities which Paul describes to those of us who are “His workmanship” as being “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.” (Eph. 2:10)

It is our ability to “walk in them” that is impaired by endless routine and responsibility which the world’s system is happy to throw our way.  It is one of the enemy’s schemes that we are so thoroughly deterred and drained by earthly focus and demands that we have no energy or vision for heavenly opportunities.  No energy or vision to make preparations for “your future self”…a forthcoming, fresh release of His Presence, Christ in us, “the hope of glory.”  (Col. 1:27)

Today is a good day to “take a stand.”  Today is a great day to ask His guidance in sifting through the necessary and the assumed-necessary.

The Passion Translation begins Romans 13:12 with the words, “Night’s darkness is dissolving away as a new day of destiny dawns.”

I like that phrase, “new day of destiny.”  As 2020 starts, we actually face a new decade of destiny.

In this New Year’s Day context, I think of “night’s darkness” as being those deceptions and busy-work the enemy endlessly shovels onto our path to drown out His Word and stifle His “light to my path.” (Psa. 119:105)

Today is the perfect day to consider your plans and strategies with a  future thanksgiving in mind.