The old year has passed, a new one is here. Today is the first Lord's Day in the new calendar year. Are you excited to meet the Lord again in this first Lord's Day? Did you spend the early hours of the New Year contemplating upon Jehovah's steadfast love and tender mercies? The words in the first part of v3 are words that may describe some of you in the past year. The Lord has tested you. He has visited you in the night when you were kept awake by tears, pains and anxieties. But what about the latter part of the verse. Did you also purpose in your heart not to sin against God? Or were you stubbornly insisting on your own ways, preferring your own paths, thus slipping away from God? The New year has come and by the mercies of God, you are not consumed. This should make you thankful and desire to undo and redo your life. Begin the new Lord's Day with an urgent prayer from this text. Call upon your Lord to hold up your goings in His path. His path is always better than ours. The Lord's path brings happiness and prosperity.

Application

Have you set down to consider about what things you want to achieve in this new year? Planning for your life is important. A common proverb says, "if you fail to plan, you plan to fail." But we must never plan our life without God. Even before we set out to design a path for ourselves, God has already a path and a plan for us. He is the Sovereign God who is in control of everything, including our life's destiny and details. However, this does not remove our responsibility to plan for our lives. But we must begin and end, and work out our plans with God. Proverbs 16:3 says "Commit thy works unto the LORD and thy thoughts shall be established." When we are not God conscious in our plans and paths, we will soon begin to slip away from God.