The Key To Experiencing A NEW Year!

When I was in Jr. High and High School I lived in Foster City in an apartment complex called Shelter Cove.

It was a cool place to live, cause there were a lot of other kids there who were in my age-range. I still am friends with some of them today. Brian Jablonski, right here, is one of them.

There was a guy, whose name I can’t remember right now, and he was older than the rest of us. He ended up getting a Go-Kart.

One day he took it out to give us rides on it.

We needed a place that had a lot of room to get good speed and really test it out, so we went to the parking lot of this Catholic Church. It was right behind our apartments on the corner of Foster City Blvd and Beach Park Blvd.

The main guy, who’s Go-Kart it was, would drive and different people would sit on this little part on the back and hold on.

Everything was going good until the accident happened.

One of our friends, Brian Watkins, sat on little back part and was holding on while the Go-Kart driver was flying around the church’s parking lot.

At first, he was laughing and everything was cool, then something went wrong. Somehow, Brian’s leg slipped off the back of the Go-Kart and got wedge under it.

He started screaming as the asphalt began ripping his pants and grinding into his leg.

The guy driving didn’t know what happened, because he couldn’t hear Brian screaming, over the sound of the revving engine - so He just kept driving.

It probably only took a minute or two, but it seemed like an eternity before we got him to realize what was happening and stop the Go-Kart.

By that time, the damage was already done.

Brian’s ankle, which was the part that got caught under the Go-Kart, was totally ripped open and tendons or ligaments were exposed.

I don’t remember what happened next, but somehow, someone ran to call 911 (didn’t have cell phones back then) and the ambulance came and took him to the hospital. He ended up being ok, but it took pretty good while for his leg to heal.

I always wondered…

What would have happened if we couldn’t get the drivers attention as quickly as we did and he kept driving for even just a couple minutes longer?

Or...

What would have happened if we could have gotten his attention right away? How hurt would Brian have been? Would he have been that hurt at all?

When you’re doing something that’s causing damage to you, or someone else, you want to stop as soon as you can, right?

This story reminds me of the one key thing that will help you experience a NEW year in 2006.

If you DO this thing, then you will experience new things – see new results. If you DON’T do this thing, then you will experience the same or less than you did last year.

Are you ready to hear what it is?

The key to experiencing a new year is: repentance!

That’s what I want to talk about today. But, before some of you put up a wall and start resisting the idea. Listen…

I don’t want you to think of it ONLY in the usual way. *Think of it as method – a technique – for releasing change in your life!

This one method can be used in any and every area of your life and it will have the same result: NEWNESS!

I want to share a quote from Jim Rohn right now. Let me remind you who he is. He’s a famous business philosopher. Most people don’t know it, but he’s also a Christian and a Pastors’ kid. He’s one of my favorite writers.

I’ve read this quote to you before, but I want you to hear it again as begin this year and this series. He says this…

“Each of us has two distinct choices to make about what we will do with our lives.

The first choice we can make is to be less than we have the capacity to be. To earn less. To have less. To read less and think less. To try less and discipline ourselves less. These are the choices that lead to an empty life. These are the choices that, once made, lead to a life of constant apprehension instead of a life of wondrous anticipation.

"And the second choice? To do it all! To become all that we can possibly be. To read every book that we possibly can. To earn as much as we possibly can. To give and share as much as we possibly can. To strive and produce and accomplish as much as we possibly can. All of us have the choice.

"To do or not to do. To be or not to be. To be all or to be less or to be nothing at all.

"Like the tree, it would be a worthy challenge for us all to stretch upward and outward to the full measure of our capabilities. Why not do all that we can, every moment that we can, the best that we can, for as long as we can?

"Our ultimate life objective should be to create as much as our talent and ability and desire will permit. To settle for doing less than we could do is to fail in this worthiest of undertakings.”

These are the choices we have in front of us as we begin 2006:

• you can choose to be greater than (>)
• you can to be less than (<)
• or you can choose to be the same (=)

Only one of these choices is really a good one.

The rest of them aren’t. It’s obvious that choosing “less than” is bad, but choosing to be the same person as you were last year isn’t much better.

Choosing to be the same is to choose stagnation. It’s the easy choice, but it’s a bad one. In fact, staying the same is usually is what happens by accident or default.

Pastor Timothy Satryan said it this way in a recent e-newsletter…

“If you were organized in 2005, you will begin 2006 being organized, too. The same can be said about being motivated, disciplined, involved, prayerful, spiritual, or any other quality or characteristic. Change in life doesn’t happen simply because the old calendar has been replaced with a new one.”

2006 will be one of these things for you:

>, <, or =.

Which set of these choices will you choose?

Some of what you experience this year and some of the results you get this year will be out of your control.

But A LOT of what you experience and the results you get will be TIED into this choice you make: to repent or not to repent.

When Jesus started his ministry he began going around teaching this one thing. Look at what he says in Mark 1:15...

Hear the message below...
(Warning: I was fighting off laryngitis, so my voice is a little raspier than normal. Sometimes I sound like I'm going through puberty again!)

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