Last year (2016) on the eve of New Year’s Eve, I was lost in worship and found myself right smack dab in a vision from the Lord. I was in the middle of an empty white room.  The Lord explained to me that each year is like a room. Each year is a room full of life experiences, struggles, persecutions, people-good, bad, and ugly, love and joy, relationships and adventures. As we step into a new room, we  step into a new room full of possibilities.

I looked around and saw the room was an empty blank space, with a solitary door leading to a hallway along one wall. I realized that the only thing in the room is what I had brought in with me and I had brought a ton of old baggage—ratty suitcases full of offense and hurt, junk that hung off my body and I wore rags of clothes that were bloodied and falling apart. I knew in that moment that if I was going to enter this new clean and pristine room I didn’t want to fill it up with the baggage and dirty junk that was hanging off of me. I knew that if I wanted to experience all that this room had in store for me that I had to leave the stuff in the past where it belonged. I turned to leave my baggage-past hurts, offenses, and grudges outside the door of this new room labeled 2017. As I set it out in the hallway I saw the open doors of years past filled to the brim with my life. Held in these rooms were all the good and bad experiences of my life

A full year later and I find myself, once again, facing the blank space of a clean, white room, this time labeled 2018. I stand at the threshold and glance down the Hallway of Life to the previous rooms….2015, 2016, 2017 and I can see the goodness of the Lord overflowing from those rooms. If I look closely, I can also see hurt, shame, and regret oozing out from under the doors, some more than others. This ooze threatens to follow me into 2018, but I am determined to face all that 2018 has for me without the oozing baggage of years gone by. I have set my heart on my Creator.

What  have you brought with you to 2018? Go back and leave that junk in the Hallway of the Past. Step forward into your own Room 2018 with boldness and confidence that your Creator is in control and has good things planned for you this year.

Heavenly Father, We trust that Your light is already shining in the darkest corners of 2018. Our life may not be the one we would have chosen, but it is the life that you’ve given to us and we thank you for all the lessons, mistakes, blessings, and love. To You we give all glory and praise as long as we have breathe to do so. Amen.