From: Beverly French [frenchb@vcss.k12.ca.us]
Sent: Sunday, January 02, 2005 6:13 AM
To: Heritage
Subject: January 2, 2005 Happy New Year!

2005 is here!  Can it be five years ago that we were ushering in a new millennium?

Once again we stand on the threshold of a new year.  It is a time of new opportunities to increase our knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord.  As we know there will be peaks and valleys, we also know that these will be opportunities to come to know Christ in an ever increasing measure. In the past we have been through circumstances, individually and collectively that have pressed us into our precious Lord.  It is through these experiences that we come to KNOW HIM and His ways in a living reality.  Loving Christ and knowing Him intimately is the desire of every heart of a Believer.

Remember Jesus said,
"He who has My commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves Me; and he who loves Me shall be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him.  John 14:21

"Ask and it shall be given to you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it shall be opened."  Matthew 7:7-8  (The New American Standard has in the margin: keep asking, keep seeking and keep knocking.)

Our coming to know Him is on going.  It is the great Apostle Paul who says as he is nearing the end of his life on earth, "That I may know Him..." "...I press on in order that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus."  Philippians 3:10 &12

Paul goes on to say,
"Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do; forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus."  Vs. 13-14

Philippians 3 is a wonderful chapter encouraging Believers to press forward
to come to a greater knowledge of Christ.   I urge you to ask the Holy
Spirit to open it up to you in a greater reality as you read it again.  The Holy Spirit, the priceless gift the Father has given to each Believer, is He who reveals Christ to us.  Therefore, let us make it a goal this new year to be more sensitive to Him for Jesus is the one who said, "...He will teach you all things..."

Paul also tells us in Philippians 1:9-10,
"And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve the things that are excellent, in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ."

And to the Colossians saints in 1:9-10 and to all Believers Paul prays, "For this reason also, since the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that your may walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God."

Let us take heed in this new year to be so yielded to God's will that we may be "conformed to the image of Christ" for this is according to God's purpose.  Therefore, we confidently place our hope and trust in Him.  Amen.