A New Year

By Odon Bulamba (02.01.04)

We praise the Lord because He has given us this opportunity to meet again, lets pray.

“Thank you Jesus, we thank you because You are our Master, thank you so much for the gift of life that you give to us, thank you because you are among us, bless your Holy name because you take care of us, you have been working with us during all the day and if we gather together this evening it’s just because of your love and your grace. Bless this time be our light lead us in everything we will do and let the Holy Spirit take the direction and control of everything. Lord Jesus we commit ourselves between Your hands and we ask you O Lord to forgive us and to purify us with your blood. Thank you because you are a God who is full of blessing we praise your name once again in Jesus name, amen.”

Today is our first meeting for the year 2004 and yesterday has gone and we are living a new day which is today and the Bible says that when a day passes that is all and we cannot see it anymore, meaning that last year has gone, that is all, we will never live 2003 anymore. So we are starting now a new life with 2004 and tonight we will try to share something about the people of Israel, the time when they were supposed to leave Egypt and to go somewhere else.

So those people were well prepared by Moses and God was not far away from them. Moses tried his best to take care of the people of Israel but God was above them and controlling everything. Moses was responsible, Moses was like a leader but the true leader was God through Moses. We are also leaders of our lives, sometimes we are leaders of our families, we are leaders of our friends, we are leaders of our activities but what we are called to check is this; is God acting through us before we lead whatever we are leading. Do I have God in me when I am leading my activities, do I have the power of God when I am leading my children, do I work with God when I am doing my job or whatever I am doing? This is the question we have to ask ourselves this evening and we will try to think about it.

When it was the time for the people of Israel to leave Egypt, God prepared them, everybody knew that this is the time for us to leave Egypt. Everybody was prepared morally, spiritually, and physically because people collected stuff from neighbours, people collected their luggage, people were ready to leave Egypt to go somewhere else. Although they did not know their destination they accepted to leave Egypt because what they faced in Egypt was too much.

In our church today, in our century many people hope and prefer to hang on to what they are called to leave. Whenever you tell someone, leave this and start a new journey, the person will ask you first of all, where am I going? Why do you want me to leave what I am doing and take a new direction without a destination? But the people of Israel did not ask God where are you taking us, they knew that God promised them a land, a new land. But they didn’t really know what that land was, although they could hear about Canaan but most of them did not at that stage know Canaan. They knew that there was a country that has maybe milk and honey and is called Canaan but they had not seen that Canaan yet.

So whenever we are called by God to leave our activities, to leave our past life, to leave whatever we were doing, we don’t have to ask God, now what will be our destination because God promised us that we would get something that is really great. Jesus promised us and said that I will go to heaven to prepare a place for you, know that you are not alone I will be with you until the end of time but I am going to prepare something for you. Whoever will believe in me will never be ashamed, whoever will trust in me I will never let him down. Do I really believe in that or not?