How Our View of Eternity Shapes our New Beginnings Here and Now

It’s the beginning of a new calendar year,1 and many people are considering New Year’s resolutions. As business builders, our minds may be filled with ideas for new initiatives in our enterprises. As followers of Jesus, we can be encouraged and guided by the reality that we serve a God who makes “all things new.”

“And he who was seated on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new.’ Also he said, ‘Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.’” Revelation 21:5

What does this truth indicate about our work in this world?

Author Donald McGilchrist, in The Entrepreneurial God, explains:

“The Greek word translated ‘new’ in 2 Peter 3 and Revelation 21 is not neos, which means completely new, but kainos, which means new in nature or quality. Thus the universe that has been divinely renewed will stand in real continuity with our present heaven and earth.”

As pastor and author Tim Keller shares in a New Year’s sermon from over thirty years ago, in God we can experience newness (kainos) even in things that are not young (neos):

Revelation 21 is telling us something absolutely revolutionary: that in God, there can be kainos without neos . . . Wherever God’s lordship and his power is being expressed and administered, there is newness.

Even as we take initiative to implement new things in our lives and businesses, let us ask God to fill our initiatives with his divine newness that brings glory now and into eternity.

Labor Unto Glory:

For a few minutes of musical inspiration, you might enjoy the soulful piece “We Labor Unto Glory,” from the Porter’s Gate Work Songs Worship Project.

Key lyrics from the third verse:

My heart, my hands, they’re kingdom bound — glory.
Where thorns no longer curse the ground — glory.
Trim the wick and light the flame — glory.
My work, it will not be in vain — glory.

Verse(s) of the Week:

“Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” Isaiah 43:18-19 (ESV)

Let’s take a moment to pray this week that God will grant us spiritual eyes and ears to perceive the new things he is doing and the new paths he is making through our challenges.