======================================================================== NEXT YEAR CAN BE THE BEST YEAR OF YOUR LIFE! by David Servant ======================================================================== Summary: This sermon focuses on how next year can be the best year of your life by following biblical principles. The speaker emphasizes the importance of being on the path of the righteous, making daily decisions to do what is right, and staying committed to God's guidance. By aligning with God's will and seeking righteousness, one can experience a brighter and better future, both spiritually and practically. Duration: 15:38 Topics: "Righteous Living", "Commitment to God's Guidance" Scripture References: Proverbs 4:18, Psalms 23:3, Romans 3:23, John 8:36, James 3:2, Matthew 16:24, 1 John 1:9, Galatians 5:16, Ephesians 2:10 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ DESCRIPTION ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This sermon focuses on how next year can be the best year of your life by following biblical principles. The speaker emphasizes the importance of being on the path of the righteous, making daily decisions to do what is right, and staying committed to God's guidance. By aligning with God's will and seeking righteousness, one can experience a brighter and better future, both spiritually and practically. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CONTENT ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Can next year be the best year of your life? Hi, welcome to today's Little Lesson and thank you so very much for joining me. This is going to be a special edition of Little Lessons because for the next 12 episodes, our theme is going to be what you can do to make next year the very best year of your entire life. Now, I know for some of you that almost seems a little bit hard to believe, maybe a little bit far- fetched for whatever reason. Maybe the trend in your life hasn't been going up. Maybe it's been kind of sloping downward. Maybe you've had a couple of rough years. Maybe there's been some twists and turns along the journey that haven't gone the way you wanted them to go. Well, welcome to human experience, everybody's life. We've all reached, of course, you know, are going to reach a physical peak in our lives, but that doesn't mean that there can't be other things, other factors that make our lives better and better each year. And you might say, well, I'm, you know, my trend is heading down. I'm getting too old now. Okay, I can sympathize with you. I'm 65, but I'm completely persuaded that next year is going to be the best year of my life ever. Of all the 64 years that have occurred, and I'm in my 65th year now, I'm persuaded that next year is going to be the best year of my entire life. And I believe that that can only be true for me, but it can also be true for you just as much. And I'm going to share scriptural truth to back all that up. Okay, my intention is over the next 12 little lessons, which we've got 12 remaining in this calendar year when I'm filling this, I'm going to share each time one biblical truth, one biblical principle that if you apply it along with the other 11 that I'm going to share, it gives you a very, very good chance. In fact, I almost want to say 100% chance, certainty that next year will be the best year of your life. And, you know, if you're not convinced of it yet, I'm going to do my best to convince you of it from the scripture. Okay. So our primary and starting scripture is one of my favorite verses from the Bible, Proverbs 4 and verse number 18. I happen to have it memorized from the New American Standard Version, which I've always been using that one practically all my Christian life. And not that I think that you should only use the New American Standard, but here's what it says in the New American Standard. The path of the righteous is like the light of the dawn that shines brighter and brighter until the full day. Now you're going to have to agree with me that that's an encouraging optimistic verse. Okay. It talks about a certain path. It's a path of the righteous and that path gets, it's like the light of the dawn. Well, I'm not sure what time you get up in the morning, but if you get up before, you know, when it's still dark, then you know exactly what that's talking about. You look outside, it's still dark. You can't see much, but as the sun gets closer and closer to rising on the horizon, the sky begins to light up and things become more and more clear. And the path of the righteous is like the light of the dawn that shines brighter and brighter. It gets clearer and clearer, better and better until the full day. That is once the sun has risen, you know, to a certain degree and everything is illuminated. And so I think that has application not just to the fact that we see things more clearly as we get older, as we stay on that path, of course, but it has a broader meaning than that. Of course, if it only means we see things more clearly, that would actually be enough because as we see things more clearly, then we can apply better wisdom in every situation. And then we have better outcomes, right? Because what is wisdom? Wisdom is the ability to make a right decision now that in the future, it shows that it was wisdom because you did the right thing now and it had the best outcome later. So if we see things more clearly, well, things are going to get better in our life. So our improving our lives, having the best year of our life is going to have something to do with what we see, what we perceive, what we know, how clear things are. And I'll be talking more about that in subsequent little lessons over the next few weeks. But it also has something to do with being on the path that God wants us to be on. And notice that in Proverbs 14, he said, the writer wrote, the path of the righteous is like the Leviton. So this is not a promise for everybody. It's not a promise for the wicked, that's for sure. You know, their path often gets darker because they become more deceived, because they resist the truth and they suppress the truth in unrighteousness, Paul wrote in Romans. But those who are on the path of the righteous, that means we're striving to do what's right, because we want to obey and to please God. And that would be, in this little lesson, the one principle that I want to indelibly imprint upon your heart and mind, something that we all can do to ensure that next year is our very best year of our life, that that dawn continues to dawn. It continues to get brighter. The trend continues to get better. And if the trend hasn't been getting better, you can turn it around and make it start getting better by doing what? By getting on and staying on the path of the righteous. Amen. Now, if you've listened to my teaching for a very long course, you know that I believe the gospel of Jesus Christ, that he died for all of our sins, and that that makes it possible for God the Father to forgive all of our sins, give us a clean slate. It's the second we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. And naturally, of course, when we believe in him, we repent and submit to him. You don't believe in him if you haven't repented and submitted to him. You might think you believed in him, but you haven't. But if you heard me, any of my teaching, I've said that over and over again. And so the path of the righteous is not the path of the, quote unquote, legally righteous. Those who are allegedly clothed in Christ's righteousness that covers all their current wickedness so that God can't see it when he looks at them, he somehow just sees Christ. No, that's not the gospel that I believe. That's not the gospel that is in the Bible. And that's not the gospel that I'm ever going to teach. In fact, if you're teaching anything, but if you're teaching that gospel, that's actually heretical according to the Bible. God forgives us of our sins. Then he breaks the power of sin over our life. So we don't have to sin any longer. Prior, we were captive to sin. God breaks the power of sin over our life. And then he comes to live inside of us to empower us by his Holy Spirit to live righteously. And so the path of the righteous, of course, none of us are righteous. All have fallen short of the glory of God. All have sinned. But if you haven't reached that point where you've gotten on the path of the righteous, then now's the time. This is the time to get on the path of the righteous. You say, well, I've accepted Jesus. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about believing in the Lord Jesus Christ and actually being born again, not just theoretically born again, but actually born again, where you actually have had all your past sins forgiven. The power of sin has been broken over your life by God, whom the Son has set free is free indeed. And God has come to live inside of you by the Holy Spirit to empower you to live righteously. That's when you get on the path of the righteous. Now, it's the path. God has laid out the path, but he's not doing the walking for us. We have to walk on the path of the righteous. And our life is basically a collection of decisions. The most important decision anyone can make is to get on the path of the righteous. That's another way of saying, be born again. Another way of saying, be saved. Another way of saying, become a child of God. There's a hundred ways that the New Testament talks about that experience, but it is a path. People sometimes seem to give the impression that this is a one-time event and bingo, you get it, you got it, and that's it. No, no, no, no. When you're born again, that's when you get on the path of the righteous. And just as it was a decision for you to initially get on that path, it's a decision every day to stay on that path, to take up our cross daily. Jesus said to refer to something daily, take up our cross daily and follow him. It's a cumulative decision we have to make every single day of our lives, a collective decision. And it adds up to a culmination of the outcome of your life, eternal life or eternal death. Blessing in your life or something less than blessing. It starts by a daily decision to stay on the path of the righteous. Are you still out there? Okay. And so that's the first principle in these 12 principles in this next year. And don't wait till next year, right now, start right now. Do right. That's another way of saying stay on the path of the righteous. Always do what you know is right. You say, well, you know, I'm trying. Great, great. Sometimes I fall. God's made provision for when we sometimes fall. Okay. You know, we all stumble, James wrote in many ways. Stumbling implies unintentionality because we've gotten on the path of the righteous. And sometimes we might stray off a little bit, but we go, oh my goodness, I've strayed straight off the path of the righteous. And you get back on the path. And Lord forgive me for getting off that path. It's a journey. It's a path. And it's the path of the righteous. That path was also mentioned by David in his most famous Psalm, Psalm 23. You know, the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside the quiet waters. He restores my soul. And now he guides me in the paths of righteousness. See, he's not doing the walking for me. He's not, you know, I'm not a robot. God's not keeping me on that path. He set the path of righteousness before me. He guides me in the paths of righteousness, but I must follow. So what's the first principle? Do right. Do right. And I encourage you to memorize that verse that we started off with in today's lesson, Proverbs 4, 18, the path of the righteous. This is so easy to memorize. You can do it right now. The path of the righteous is like the light of the dawn that shines brighter and brighter until the full day. Lock that in your brain. Say that, that's a promise, a conditional promise. But it applies to me because I'm a person who's righteous. I've been forgiven of all my sins. So God's not holding anything in the past against me. He's made me his child, filled me with his Holy Spirit. He's guiding me through his commandments, through his spirit who lives inside of me. And I am determined to always do what is right in God's eyes. And there's blessing there. And we'll talk about that in future Little Lessons. Blessing for the future, of course, eternal life, but blessing in this life. The Bible promises that. And if next year is going to be the best year of your life, this could be the most important thing I say in all 12 of these Little Lessons. Getting on the path of the righteous, if you're not on already, and then staying on the path of the righteous, that's the most important principle we could say. I might find myself saying that about other principles as we look at them in future Little Lessons. They're all really important, but they're actually all related and they're all could be easily tied together. So what I want you to remember from today is this is kind of like the 12 days of Christmas my true love gave to me, that Christmas carol. So we're going to have 12 Little Lessons. And I'm like the true love who's giving you a gift. And here's the gift. It's the encouragement, the admonition, the reminder, do right. Starting right now. And anything you're doing that you know is wrong, stop doing it. Then you're on the path of the righteous. And then it's like the light of the dawn gets brighter and brighter until the full day. Okay. Thank you so very much for joining me. I'll see you at the next Little Lesson in two days. We'll have principle number two of these 12 principles for next year to be your very best year yet. God bless you. ======================================================================== Video: https://sermonindex2.b-cdn.net/HQ_cNgFZ5HM.mp4 Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/david-servant/next-year-can-be-the-best-year-of-your-life/ ========================================================================