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

It’s the beginning of a new calendar year, and many people are considering New Year’s resolutions. As business builders, our minds may be filled with thoughts of new initiatives for 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.”

Revelation 21:5 says, “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.’”

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

Author Donald McGilchrist, in The Entrepreneurial God, explains that:

The Greek work 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 (36 minutes) 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’s be sure to prayerfully ask the God who makes all things new to reveal to us the new things He is doing in our lives and in the workplaces and communities he has placed us in.

One Last Thing:

For a few minutes of inspiration in music, you might enjoy the soulful piece linked below “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.