Behold, I send an Angel before you to keep you in the way and to bring you into the place which I have prepared.

Ex 23:20-21

As we begin a new year, it is normal to have questions about what the future holds, it is this anxiety that has fuelled the new year predictions industry, please don’t get me wrong, I believe that God reveals to us the future as we need to know it, what I have come to question over time is the yearly ritual of ‘prophecies’.

I know that God does not flip his diary every year to find out what will be every year, He does not count months, days or years as we do. God dwells in timelessness but we do so it is alright for us to seek to regulate our lives according to our times, we just need to understand that one day with the Lord is like a thousand years and a thousand years is like one day

This is one thing we can be assured of, God is always ahead of us, he never follows us, we follow him, and God was in 2021 before we entered into it.

God told the people of Israel when he brought them out of Egypt that He was taking them to land flowing with milk and honey, this was the description of the prepared place! A land very much unlike every and anything they had known up until that time.

Beloved God has you on a journey to a prepared place, 2021 is another time stamp on the way to the destination He has in place for you.

Hear what the Lord said to them

I am sending my Angel before you, in other words the Angel would go ahead of them, would keep them and would bring them into the place God had prepared for them.

At no point in their journey would they ever be without that presence, they just needed to be aware of it. Glory!

All this was in the Old Testament, in the New Testament we have a far better thing in Jesus

“Most assuredly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door, but climbs up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber.  But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.   To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice; and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.  And when he brings out his own sheep, he goes before them; and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice.“

John 10:1-5

The Good Shepherd goes before his sheep and he always leads them into green pasture, it is the business of the sheep to follow the shepherd.

Our Lord knows the way, let us resolve to follow Him, it is great to have goals, vision and mssion statements but let your chief mission statement be to follow the Lord.