Seems to me a man can most usually take time to contemplate, and if he does it will save him a lot of riding and a lot of headaches.”
              –Louis L’Amour  (The Sky-Liners)

    “The wicked hope to destroy me, but I contemplate Your decrees.”
              –Psalm 119:95 (HCSB)
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Welcome to 2020!  The Lord has great things for each of us this year as we draw closer to Him.  That is the key–we must draw to Him.  What a great portion of Scripture to get us back to our study of the Psalms.  These first five verses of Psalm 32 give us something to meditate upon as we start the journey through 2020.  Take time this week to really look at and contemplate these verses.  Dwell on them!

    1 – How joyful is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered!
    2 – How joyful is the man the Lord does not charge with sin and in whose spirit is no deceit!
    3 – When I kept silent, my bones became brittle from my groaning all day long.
    4 – For day and night Your hand was heavy on me; my strength was drained as in the summer’s heat. Selah
    5 – Then I acknowledged my sin to You and did not conceal my iniquity. I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,” and You took away the guilt of my sin. Selah
(HCSB)

    Oh the wondrous thought of our sins being forgiven.  Sin is gone!  It is put out of sight!  Once our sins are forgiven, all of them, we are to live in complete honesty.  Become a person of integrity and let there be no deceit within you.  Just think!  Your sins are forgiven!  I am reminded of the words so marvelously penned by Horatio G. Spafford.  Let them roll through your mind; let them come forth through the day so that they are well entrenched within your heart and soul.

         “My sin–oh, the bliss of this glorious thought,
          My sin–not in part but the whole,
          Is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more:
          Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!”

WOW! (old Greek term for “whooeee”) that just sends shivers up and down my back.  All my sins, all your sins–all of them, not just a few, not just the bad ones, not just the secret ones, but ALL of them.
    Sin is draining.  The guilt and shame make a person feel miserable.  Look at verse 3, bones begin to ache, they become brittle.  Have you ever felt an ache deep into your bones?  Sometimes that cannot be medicated.  That’s the way sin is.  It wears on you.  It makes you a sour, despondent person.  But, with forgiveness you bear it no more!  Even the guilt is removed along with the sin.
    My, my, my, what else can be said?  “Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!”

The Good Book has some thoughts on judgment, but a lawman can have a pretty short life if he doesn’t at least do a little of it.”
               –Lou Bradshaw  (Along the Way)

    “So teach us to number our days, That we may gain a heart of wisdom.”
               –Psalm 90:12 (NKJV)
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I see so many in this Christian walk singing “Tra-la-la-la-la-la” and paying no attention to the life they’re living; seeing if it matches up with God’s Word or not.  They don’t pay much heed to their surroundings.  They could walk into a nightclub and it wouldn’t be much different from going to a ballgame, or maybe even going to church.  Now, that’s not hard to do these days either, for many churches keep it as dark as a nightclub with only light on the performers on the stage.
    How many days do you have left in your life?  You don’t know.  So are you making each day count, living it to the fullest–for the Lord and not for self? We hear that clamor, “Live for your self; make each day count.”  But it doesn’t mean a thing if it is not lived for the Lord.  There is no true satisfaction for the soul except in the God of the Bible.  Is all your hope centered on Jesus Christ?
     “No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” (Luke 16:13, NKJV)  What gets in the way most of the time is self.  We set ourselves up as if we are God, “I believe the Scriptures mean this,” or “in my opinion.”  People bow continually at altars of other gods and then try to excuse their actions.  You cannot mix the worship of the true God with the worship of the things of the world.  It cannot be done.  D.L. Moody, said, “If worldliness should come in, godliness would go out.”
     The road to heaven and hell leads in different directions.  Which master do you choose to follow?  Are you numbering your days right?  Don’t be a self-deceiver!  The time is shorter than we think.  Remember how fast last year went by?  Your life is speeding by as well, make good use of the time on this earth that the Lord has given you.

You cannot submit to evil without allowing evil to grow.  Each time the good are defeated, or each time they yield, they only cause the forces of evil to grow stronger.  Greed feeds greed, and crime grows with success.  Our giving up what is ours merely to escape trouble would only create the greater trouble for someone else.”
              –Louis L’Amour  (A Man Called Noon)

    “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.”
              –2 Corinthians 5:17 (NKJV)
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Welcome back!  I know that an echo is a sound that is reverberated after the original sound.  I have never thought of a campfire giving off an “echo”, but if one looks at the analogy of the campfire being their life then it is continually giving off an echo.  Look in the mirror, if you dare, there is a semblance to the person of the past, but there is also a “new look.”  Hmmm, maybe that’s the way we are in our Christian walk.  There are some appearances of who we were in the past, maybe we are still paying consequences–an “echo” if you will–but there is a new person.
    What is in store for you in 2020?  What are you going to do for the Lord?  Maybe more importantly, what is He going to do for you/in you?  I would say the most important thing for you to do in this coming year is found in the last two words of Matthew 17:5.  The heavenly Father is speaking, “Hear Him!”  Listen to what Jesus is telling you this year.  How can you do that?  You must be in the Word of God.  The more you have of the Word down in your heart, the more the Holy Spirit can speak.  I might mention that the Greek for the word, “hear” in this verse means “to yield to.”  The phrase “hear and obey” would convey this thought.  Will your yield this year–2020–to the authority of Christ?

         “All to Jesus I surrender, All to Him I freely give;
          I will ever love and trust Him, In His service daily live.

          All to Jesus I surrender, Humbly at His feet I bow;
          Worldly pleasure all forsaken, Take me, Jesus, take me now.

          All to Jesus I surrender, Make me, Savior, wholly Thine;
          Let me feel the Holy Spirit, Truly know that Thou art mine.

          All to Jesus I surrender, Lord, I give myself to Thee;
          Fill me with Thy love and power, Let Thy blessing fall on me.

          All to Jesus I surrender, Now I feel the sacred flame;
          O the joy of full salvation, Glory, glory to His name.”
                  –Judson W. Van de Venter

    The attacks from the devil and his minions are not going to stop in 2020.  Evil is prodding ever so heavily across this land and throughout the whole world.  To survive, we must surrender.  To the enemy?  NEVER!  But to survive we must surrender completely to the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior, our Guide, our Comfort, our Protector.  This year–2020–walk in His presence.

But just to breathe that untainted air, just to see once the boundless open of colored sand and rock—to realize what the freedom of eagles meant—would not that have helped anyone?”
              –Zane Grey  (The Call of the Canyon)

    Be to me a rock of habitation to which I may continually come; You have given commandment to save me, For You are my rock and my fortress.”
              –Psalm 71:3 (NASB)
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There’s still a few embers burning in the campfire of 2019.  The year–the events, sorrows and pain, gladness and smiles–that it brought are now history.  There’s nothing that can be done about them, but to store them away in our memory and learn, hoping that we can be a better person in 2020 because of them.
    I almost didn’t get this sent out.  One, I thought about not sending anything out until next week, but felt stirred that I should as someone out there needs this.  Second, I almost forgot.  Call it the length of the year, or if you must, progressive aging.  The year being almost over we do take time to think of the past year, the good and the bad.  But take a minute or two, and ponder the words I’m going to relate to you from Bruce Kiskaddon.  This is not the complete poem, just a few verses for you to ponder as you sit, coffee in hand, in the evening shadows.

         The Creak of the Leather

         It’s likely that you can remember
         A corral at the foot of a hill
         Some mornin’ along in December
         When the air was so cold and so still.
         When the frost lay as light as a feather
         And the stars had jest blinked out and gone.
         Remember the creak of the leather
         As you saddled your hoss in the dawn.

         When the glow of the sunset had faded
         And you reached the corral after night
         On a hoss that was weary and jaded
         And so hungry yore belt wasn’t tight.
         You felt about ready to weaken
         You knowed you had been a long way
         But the old saddle still kep a creakin’
         Like it did at the start of the day.
                     . . . .
         When yore old and yore eyes have grown hollow
         And your hair has a tinge of the snow
         But there’s always the memories that follow
         From the trails of the dim long ago.
         There are things that will haunt you forever
         You noticed that strange as it seems
         One sound, the soft creak of the leather,
         Weaves into your memories and dreams.

    There are some things that make us sigh about the past years, including 2019.  True, there are probably some things from the past that haunt us.  But we must never forget, that means always remember that the Lord makes all things new.  The year is almost over, a new one to begin so what is it that will be in store for you in 2020?  
    Perhaps for many that read this, it will be the year that they take their purpose in life seriously.  They quit playing games with the Lord and seek to follow Him completely.  And, you want to know something else?  Look up!  This may be the year of the Lord’s return.