The Spiritual Power Of Now by Kim Reisman

Scripture Focus:

You have heard my predictions and seen them fulfilled, but you refuse to admit it. Now I will tell you new things, secrets you have not yet heard. They are brand new, not things from the past. So you cannot say, ‘We knew that all the time!’

Isaiah 48:6-7 (NLT)

“The day is coming,” says the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and Judah. This covenant will not be like the one I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand and brought them out of the land of Egypt. They broke that covenant, though I loved them as a husband loves his wife,” says the Lord. “But this is the new covenant I will make with the people of Israel after those days,” says the Lord. “I will put my instructions deep within them, and I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.”

Jeremiah 31:31-33 (NLT)

One of my favorite quotes for this time of year is by Rainer Maria Rilke who said, “And now we welcome the new year. Full of things that have never been.” In our passages for today, God talks about new things. New things are on the horizon. He plans to make a new covenant and tell his people brand new things that they have never known before.

Jesus frequently said, “In the past it was written… but I say…” Those words should remind us that our faith doesn’t exist in the past, it’s a present reality, which brings with it a new future built on our new relationship with God.

We’ve welcomed our Messiah Jesus and entered a new year. God didn’t become human in Jesus to focus on the past. God became human in Jesus to usher in a new kingdom and that kingdom begins now. We don’t have to look to the past for our spiritual power, and we don’t have to wait for the future. God is working, in the present, doing brand-new things NOW.

Laurie Beth Jones has written that “all the power of the universe is hovering around us – waiting for us to claim it and call it forth into being. Just because we have stumbled for years in the dark doesn’t mean we can’t, or shouldn’t, turn on the light.” [1]

Jesus came to bring light to the darkness and the darkness has never been able to put it out. We can live in that light, now. We’ve been set free from the past – from all the “if only’s” that burden and weigh us down. As we move more fully into this new year, claim the truth that our spiritual power rests in the present. That is where God is doing these brand-new things. Not the past, not the future, but now.

As you pray and fast, reflect on the things that may have been holding you back. The “if only’s” that may be burdening you. How can you release those and claim the spiritual power of the present?

[1]  Laurie Beth Jones, Jesus in Blue Jeans: A Practical Guide to Everyday Spirituality, (New York: Hyperion, 1997) p103.