A NEW YEAR’S GREETING FROM YOUR FRIEND, A. B. SIMPSON
In the name of the Lord, we wish for all to whom these words may come a happy New Year. In order that it may be so, let it be:
A year with Jesus. Let us seek its plan and direction from Him. Let us look to Him for our desire, ideals, expectations in it. Then shall it bring to us exceeding abundantly above all that we can ask or think. Let Him also be the sufficiency and strength of all the year. Let us not merely try to obey Christ or imitate Christ. Let us have Christ Himself in us to do the works, and let us every moment fall back on Him both to will and do in us of His good pleasure. And let our service be not our works, but the grace of Christ with us.
A year of self-forgetting ministry for Christ and others. Let us not drag our burdens through the year, but drop all our loads of care and be free to carry His yoke and His burden. Let us make the happy exchange, giving ours and taking His. So shall we lose our heaviest load—ourselves—and so shall we find our highest joy, divine love, the more blessed “to give” rather “than to receive.” Let us do good to all men as we have opportunity, let us lose no opportunity of blessing. Especially let us seek to win souls, and may 1886 [2015] be the harvest year of our lives.
A year of prayer. Let us learn the meaning of the ministry of prayer. Let us reach persons this year we cannot reach in person; let us expect results that we have never dared to claim before; let us count every difficulty only a greater occasion for prayer, and let us call on God for great and mighty things which we know not, and may the most glorious reminiscences of next New Year’s Eve be the wonders of answered prayer.
A year of joy and praise. Let us live in the promises of God and the outlook of His deliverance and blessing. Let us never dwell on the trial, but always on the victory just before. Let us not dwell in the tomb, but in the garden of Joseph and the light of the resurrection. Let us keep our faces toward the sun rising. In everything give thanks. Praise ye the Lord.
A year to forget the things that are behind and reach out unto those that are before. God has “a new thing” for us in 1886 [2015]. Let it be a year of deeper, wider, higher, diviner things. Let us hold fast that which we have attained, but go out also to “the regions beyond,” and arise and possess the length and breadth of the land which the Lord our God does give to us.
Yours in Him,
A.B. Simpson
(Excerpts reprinted from a personal letter to friends and acquaintances, January 1886—equally relevant for 2015.)