Back in the Hebrew Bible, or the Old Testament, God commanded the Jews to celebrate the “Year of Jubilee”. Every fifty years, everyone in Israel was to return to their traditional family homes for a celebration. They were also instructed to release any Hebrew slaves they may have, and also weren’t allowed to reap or sow during that year. (If you don’t believe me, you can check it out in Leviticus 25:8-22)

Spamboy!I thought I’d take a break from our series on the early church to talk about something I found in my inbox this morning. If you’re like me, you probably have at least one friend who never sends you any real email, only forwards. And, if you’re even more like me, you don’t have the heart to tell this person to just stop emailing you crap. Sadly, it’s usually either a: Republican Party crap (no offense to Republicans, but if I want to know all the ways that Hillary Clinton fulfills the role of the Antichrist, I’ll look it up) or b: Religious crap. If you don’t know anyone who does this to you, you should either a: be thankful that God has had mercy on your soul, or b: consider the possibility that you, yourself are the spammer. B is a scary possibility, I know, but better to hear it from a friend, right? (Don’t worry, we’ll get back to Jubilating in a moment.) Like I was saying, I don’t have the heart to tell this person I don’t want to get spammed by them, so I just created a folder/label and routed all of their correspondence into it. Well, today I embarked upon my weekly journey to clean out my spam folders and found a little gem of a forward entitled: “In 2008 all of God’s promises come true! It’s the year of JUBILEE!^20″ (^20 means there were literally 20 more exclamation marks. Which makes sense because I base my decision to open forwards based solely on the number of exclamations.)

Ok, so this email claimed that it was “The year of Jubilee!” Unfortunately, the author appears to have no real Biblical concept of what “Jubilee” even means. As if this email wasn’t enough, I was watching a famous Christian television channel the other day when I learned that God wanted to bless America, and American Christians in particular, this year beyond anything that they could ever imagine. God’s Jubilee express isn’t just stopping on the interwebs and tv stations either, I was reading a magazine article in a fairly respected Christian publication that assured me that this was going to be “My best year ever in God”. What does that even mean? It sounds like a mix of VH1’s “Best week ever” and the Daily Show’s “This week in God.”

What if, instead of trying to “divinate” God’s plan for us this year, we simply asked God what kind of year he wanted us to make it? What if we asked God what kind of year he wanted it to be? In another fairly popular Old Testament passage, Moses tells the newly freed Israelites:

See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess. But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. [Deuteronomy 30:15-20]

God has given us another year. He’s given us the ability to choose life or death. Blessings or cursing. I don’t claim to have the gift of prophecy, but I have a feeling that God wants to do some amazing things with you (and with LifePoint) in the coming year. How can we make sure it happens? Choose Life.