Praying for Your New Year

What I’m about to share with you is some uncommon stuff.  It’s not for normal people, but those who can handle uncommon results.

Here’s how it happened to us.
For the a majority of my life, roughly 20 or more years, I spent New Year’s Eve in church.  It’s known in many places as Watch Meeting [or Watch-night Service].  You watch the New Year come in.

It wasn’t until 2009 after changing churches, that I didn’t attend a watch service for the first time in many years.  I no longer attended because our church doesn’t have such a service.  What a blow that was, I had no idea what to do now on New Year’s Eve.

Not sure what to do, Pamela and I ended up hanging out with a few close friends for their New Year’s Eve dinner party.  How different [for me at least].  What was “common” to others was certainly “uncommon” for me.  I got to see the ball drop for the 1st time since my childhood.

What happened next?
The next year, Pamela and I were once again faced with figuring out what we should do to celebrate the upcoming year.  We decided [it was decided for us] to spend this time in a most special, “uncommon” way.  Since this time was special and only occurred once a year, we decided to make it just that, a special time.  If you think about it, the New Year represents the 1st of the 1st.  It’s the first of the first part of a new year.  It would appear that this is the most opportune time to give God the 1st.  Why not give Him the first part [first hour] of our year?

We decided to spend this time in prayer, but not a traditional type of prayer.  Why prayer?  It’s different.  It honors God.  But what really made [makes] this practice so significant is what we must do to get ready for this special event.  We have to take the month of December to put together what we call our family plan.  This plan is our detail document of what we accomplished in the current year and what we plan to accomplish [with God’s help] in the new year.  This special prayer event helps us force on working together to make plans for our family that will change our lives forever.  Now you have to admit that’s not normal.  This plan is what we use for this very special prayer.  We pray over it page by page, asking God for help, ideas and even better plans.  And that’s exactly what He does.  This is not for the “common”.

If you’re interested in making this new year the best year ever, try this practice of bringing in the new year honoring God with a plan.  Take the first part of your year submitting your plans and ideas to God.  This uncommon practice is called prayer.  It’s our prayer that you have the best year ever and we’re praying for you as a part of our family plan.

Question: What would it take for you to take a small part of the 1st day of the year to have a personal prayer service over your new year plans? Leave of a comment below.