What is a year? 365 days?
The holy language of scripture calls a year shannah, which also means the duplicate or the repeat. The nature of nature is to repeat; winter, spring, summer and fall.
So, now I have a new year before me, and what kind of year will it be? I am such a creature of habit and gravitate towards doing what I have done before i.e.: same routines and courses, even if they are harmful to me. (I’m thinking of the 17th Grill’s cinnamon knots.) So, what will this New Year, the shannah, be for me?
Shannah has a double meaning. It not only means the repeat…it also means the change. How can the same word mean the opposite? The way of the world is to repeat – but the way of God is the way of newness and change. You can’t know God and not be changed by knowing Him, and His will. The New Year ahead will be not a time of repetition, but of change and new beginnings, new steps, of breaking out of the old. This comes from the choice He gives us. If you want to experience a year of new things, you must choose to live, not in the repetition of the natural, but in the newness of the supernatural. Choose to walk not in your will, but in the will of Him who is beyond the natural and all that is old.
The scriptures tell us that He makes all things new. Instead of making New Year’s resolutions that I typically do not keep, my mission today is to step out of my old ways, habits, and steps and do what I’ve never done before, but should have. Walk in the newness of Spirit.
Happy New Year or Shannah
Faith
Scripture references: Isaiah 43:19, Romans 6:4, II Corinthians 5:17
*From my new devotional book by Jonathan Cahn, The Book of Mysteries.