You Can Begin Again

The Word of the Lord for you today is that you can begin again, and I trust that I can get you to see that that’s what God has for you. It’s the potential of possibility that is there for each one of us today–you can begin again. Whether it’s a new year, or another birthday has come around, or you need to find new employment or a new place to live, you can begin again.

When you became a Christian, Paul explains in II Corinthians 5:17, “… there is a new creation [or a new creature]. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (ESV). So, from that point on in your life, from that first moment when you accepted Jesus as your Lord, the past was gone. From that moment on, all things became new.

Some of us made that decision decades ago. Some made it years ago, some perhaps only months ago. But it seems as we go along in our lives that we lose the initial thrill; there was something uniquely exciting about the newness of the whole thing that has faded. I believe that God’s good news to us in that condition is, “You can begin again.” You don’t need to be saved again; you just need to get back the joy that Satan has stolen from you. Perhaps it seems at times to us that our faith isn’t what it ought to be, or what it used to be. Maybe our desire to read our Bible and go to the church meetings and Bible studies and so on just seems to lack a bit of enthusiasm at times. But God’s message to us is to focus, we can begin again.

Let’s just think back over the past year, perhaps some of us are still struggling to get our priorities right. Maybe we still haven’t realized that it is God first, family second and business third. Maybe we’re still working on that. And I want to say to you that you can start over again and get it right this time because today is a new day!

Perhaps materially, you’ve discovered that over the past year your financial circumstances haven’t worked out as you’d planned, and you haven’t been able to keep ahead of your bills. Or, maybe you haven’t been able to pay your credit card balance. Although I don’t know why; you’re the one charging the purchases up. Possibly life just hasn’t worked out the way you wanted it to. But again, we’ve got the opportunity to begin anew. It might be physically that you need to begin again. We all need to forget about all the aches and the pains and the rheumatis’, as I say, and we need to begin again. It is God that says you can begin again!

As I was thinking about that phrase, I realized what a powerful concept that is, and I wondered which Bible character would best illustrate this truth, that even though things might not have gone well for them, they started out again and made a success of whatever they did. I thought of Isaac in Genesis chapter 26. And so, I am going to share a story about Isaac with you so we can see how he made the choice to begin again and as a result of that action, made a success of his life. Not that he wasn’t successful to start with. Isaac was a son of Abraham, who left to Isaac a fortune. Isaac started off, as it were, with a silver spoon in his mouth. He was already a success, had a lot of possessions and was comfortable, to say the least.

ISAAC BLESSED

Let’s look at his blessings first. Genesis 6:12 reads, “And Isaac sowed in that land and reaped in the same year a hundredfold. The Lord blessed him.” Why did the Lord bless him? Because he operated the principle of giving and receiving. He sowed the seed, and he got the harvest; he received a hundred-fold response from a seed. That’s pretty good interest on your money, isn’t it? For the sake of the mathematicians among us, that means 1,000% interest. I haven’t yet found a bank that will give that to me, apart from God’s bank, which will never run out of resources. Verse 13, “And the man waxed great.” That doesn’t mean he carried his success well before him, with large stomach bones! It means that he continued to prosper.

He went forward, he progressed, and he grew until he became very great. “And the man became rich and gained more and more until he became very wealthy. He had possessions of flocks and herds and many servants, so that the Philistines envied him” (verses 13-14). So, Isaac began by applying the principles and God blessed him in their application. But then, as it so often happens, he got into a tight spot in life. You will always find people who are critical of the teaching of prosperity, critical of the faith teaching, and literal Bible teaching. Predictably, they are usually the ones who are not enjoying the blessings they resent.

The Philistines were envious of Isaac because he was enjoying God’s blessings. Isaac took the same land that they had worked, but God blessed him a hundred-fold, and they immediately reacted negatively to it. This is something God has taught me through the years. When I think I see people being more blessed than I am, I recall how God has also blessed me over the years. Sometimes when I see other ministries that look more blessed than this ministry, I think it’s important that I don’t react negatively because somebody else seems to be enjoying God’s blessings more than I am. We all should thank God for those people. We should say, “Well, praise God, I’m thrilled that they are blessed.” The same God that’s blessing them is the God that is blessing me in different ways. Maybe he’s blessing me on a different timeline, but it’s the same God and we should be thrilled that He is blessing other people too.

Those who react negatively to prosperity demonstrate that they’re still having struggles with their attitudes toward money and material things. Get your concordance out and look for how many times Jesus spoke about material things. God wants us to enjoy them and to be blessed by them. However, God doesn’t want us to make them the object of the total motivation of our life. They’re just tools that we use for the glory of God. So here we have a situation where one man is being blessed and being blessed incredibly, and we have the neighbors around him upset and uptight because of it.

And so, the Philistines did something worse. They got beyond the stage of mere envy and negativity took hold of them. In verse 15, “(Now the Philistines had stopped and filled with earth all the wells that his father’s servants had dug in the days of Abraham his father).” The Philistines filled the old wells with dirt! Do you see what negative thinking can do? “If I can’t get that blessing, I’m going to do all I can to make sure that you don’t get it either!” Now, where is that going to lead you? Well, to me, that’s like having one foot on a banana skin and the other foot in the grave. It’s downhill all the way from there because they are going to be consumed by that negative attitude towards someone else’s blessing.

Next even worse than that, they got their king to speak to Isaac. “And Abimelech said to Isaac, ‘Go away from us, for you are much mightier than we'” (verse 16). Praise God. My belief is that every Christian reading this is going to be so blessed by God that you’ll even start getting some negative reaction from your neighbors. And you know what I say to that? Nuts to the neighbors! God’s blessing is for them as well. We must share that beautiful, great truth that God wants nothing but the best for all those who believe in Him.

ISAAC BEGINS AGAIN (PART ONE)>/h2>
So, what did Isaac do? Isaac chose a peaceful road; Isaac chose the road of non-resistance. Let’s look at verses 17 and 18, where Isaac begins again. “So Isaac departed from there and encamped in the Valley of Gerar and settled there. And Isaac dug again the wells of water that had been dug in the days of Abraham his father, which the Philistines had stopped after the death of Abraham. And he gave them the names that his father had given them.” Isaac began again and so can you.

“But when Isaac’s servants dug in the valley and found there a well of spring water, the herdsmen of Gerar quarreled with Isaac’s herdsmen, saying, ‘The water is ours.’ So he called the name of the well Esek, because they contended with him” (verses 19-20). This sounds familiar, doesn’t it? There are some very interesting concepts in this section where Isaac begins again.

The first one I want to share with you is, of course, the fact that God has no grandchildren. Did you ever think about that? God has no grandchildren, because faith in God and joining His family is an individual matter. You cannot pass it down the line. God expects you to have faith in your own faith, the faith that is resident within you. I can try to inspire and encourage and motivate you to exercise your own faith, but you must have faith in your own faith. You must use that faith. Isaac had to do that. I think it is very significant because of the circumstances, but there’s a great truth there. Isaac had to go and re-dig the wells of his father Abraham, because he had to learn and experience life for himself.

Another concept that I think we must see is that God’s blessings flow smoothly. You don’t have to work to get God to bless you. You don’t have to beg and plead and go through stress and strain. That is not the nature of the God and Father that we worship. God’s blessings flow smoothly. What we must do is to get into the flow of God’s abundance. I think that is the reason why when those Philistines first began to get uppity and resentful about Isaac’s prosperity, that he just turned around and moved somewhere else and his needs were met again. He felt that he needed that peace, that contentment, that flow, which is part of life when everything’s going nicely.

ISAAC BEGINS AGAIN (PART TWO)

Isaac needed to get into the flow of God’s blessing, so he moved on and dug the next well again, and the other herdsmen said, “It’s ours,” even though they hadn’t been using it. They wanted the water from that well, and so Isaac called the name of the well “Esek, because they contended with him” (verse 20). “Esek” means contention, or argument or quarrel. So, what did Isaac do? Isaac had to begin yet again, part two.
“Then they dug another well, and they quarreled over that also, so he called its name Sitnah” (verse 21). Well, we know one thing about Isaac, he was getting good at digging wells, wasn’t he? He was also learning how to handle people who opposed what he wanted to do. He was getting a great education in the university of hard knocks. And so, Isaac begins again, part three.

ISAAC BEGINS AGAIN (PART THREE)

In verse 22, “And he moved from there and dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it. So he called its name Rehoboth, saying, ‘For now the Lord has made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land.'” “Rehoboth” means room, freedom, spaciousness, as some of the modern translations handle it. So, it took three tries; Isaac had to begin again three times before he found that right environment, before he created the right atmosphere in which he was comfortable and able to enjoy the flow of God’s blessings.
You see, there’s a certain persistence needed in the Christian life, and I think the message that comes to us is “You can begin again and again.” God blessed and there was room, there was spaciousness. But Isaac felt that having one successful accomplishment, he wanted to go on. “From there he went up to Beersheba. And the Lord appeared to him the same night and said, ‘I am the God of Abraham your father. Fear not, for I am with you and will bless you and multiply your offspring for my servant Abraham’s sake.’ So he built an altar there and called upon the name of the Lord and pitched his tent there. And there Isaac’s servants dug a well” (Genesis 26:23-25).

It is interesting that God did not come to Isaac on any of the previous occasions where there was hatred, where there was contention. God came to Isaac after he had kept moving on, found the right spot, and peace and room were there. God came to him and said, “I will bless you.” You might recall that God became known to the Jewish people as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It’s nice to be remembered down through the years as one who had heard from God. And so, what did he do? He built an altar in Beersheba. He called upon the name of the Lord and pitched his tent there. Isaac’s servants dug him a well. They were experts in well-digging by now. Give them a shovel and they dig!

ISAAC BEGINS AGAIN (PART FOUR)

Then Abimelech from Gerar visited Isaac. You will remember Abimelech was the king that suggested in a very kind way that Isaac leave town before there was any trouble. With the king came Ahuzzath his adviser and Phicol the commander of his army. “Isaac said to them, ‘Why have you come to me, seeing that you hate me and have sent me away from you?’ They said, ‘We see plainly that the Lord has been with you. [They had realized where Isaac’s prosperity had come from.] So we said, let there be a sworn pact between us, between you and us, and let us make a covenant with you, that you will do us no harm, just as we have not touched you and have done to you nothing but good and have sent you away in peace. You are now the blessed of the Lord.’ So he made them a feast, and they ate and drank” (verses 27-30).

It was a bit of tongue in cheek to say, “We have done to you nothing but good and have sent you away in peace!” They wanted the well that Isaac’s servants had dug but didn’t offer any payment for the labor that had made it viable, and also they wanted his whole family to move somewhere else, as the family was mightier than the residents. Isaac overlooked their self-serving statement and made them a feast. Isaac was still a man that wanted no contention or strife, and he went along with this concept of making a covenant with them so they could live peaceably.

“In the morning they rose early and exchanged oaths. And Isaac sent them on their way, and they departed from him in peace. That same day Isaac’s servants came and told him about the well that they had dug and said to him, ‘We have found water.’ He called it Shibah [Sheba]; therefore, the name of the city is Beersheba to this day” (verses 31-33). “Shibah” means the well of the oath (Barnes). The location had been named Beersheba previously and had a well there, and now there was a second well.

IT’S YOUR CHOICE

So, the message that God has for each one of us today is, “You can begin again.” What it takes to do so demands a choice. It’s a choice of you renewing your mind to say, “Yes, I choose to begin again” and you can focus on some area of your life. I’m talking about making a real, quality commitment. I choose to think new thoughts. I choose to set new goals. I choose to seek a fulfilling life. You can choose to begin again. Perhaps in relation to your family and others you can say you choose to improve your marriage relationship, or you choose to improve the feeling within the family circle. You can choose to get a better understanding of those people you work with or you can choose to make a more positive contribution to life on planet Earth.

Above all, you can choose to begin again in your relationship with God. You can choose to say you’re going to choose to let God talk to you every day as you read part of the Bible. Whatever part you read, ask yourself the question, “What is God saying to me today?” You can choose to begin again with God. You can allow God to talk to you from His word, and you can choose to talk to God every day. He loves to hear from you. You’re His son or his daughter, and He wants a relationship with you. He wants a conversation going on between Himself and the members of the family. You can also say, I choose to begin again to share my faith with others, because God just didn’t want you to get your ticket to the sky and forget everybody else. He has planted you where you are so you can meet the needs of humanity there.

The challenge to you and me today is to choose to begin again.

*** You can listen to the complete original live teaching at http://peterwade.com/audio-teachings/ . Choose the “Single Teachings” group and click on the list icon at the bottom left of the wavelength picture. Go right to the bottom of the list and you will see the two parts of the “You Can Being Again” teaching. You can listen to the teachings or download them to your device. This article appears on the site http://peterwade.com and is Copyright © Peter Wade 2020.