The New Year Wishes from the Bible - 9 Steps to a Fulfilled Life

Instead of the usual Chinese New Year greetings of "Wishing you a Happy and Prosperous New Year.", it may be more meaningful and empowering to know the what the Bible says. Here is a reorganization of what I found on the internet and presented in a mind-map form to help our understanding. It starts with God, giving us a New life, and the ever assurance of His plan and love for us to live our life to the full. Even when the going is tough, or when we are old, we can always count on Him to go forward and even outdo our youth! Praises to God.

I was googling on the internet and found 27 Bible Verses for the New Year - Inspiring Promises for Your Life!. A good way to benefit more from reading it is to try to reclassify them into meaningful steps so that we can find the flow of the logic and rationale of the verses. So here is my derived work as shown in a mind-map form:

The 9 Key Steps:

The Corresponding Bible Verses:

Wishing you a fruitful 2017 as you find out the will of God and His promises for you.

See also More than Just a New Year Wish

Lim Liat (c) 29 Jan 2017

Why are we easily hurt?

Why are we easily hurt? How can we prevent or build up our resistance to such hurts? The answers from Sinology and the Bible.

The Typical Advice from Christians:

Here is a typical answer from or for believers like me:

"It’s unfortunate that offenses ever occur, but the Bible indicates that if we keep our focus upon God and His Word, He will maintain such peace in our heart that we can become resistant to offenses. “Great peace have they which love thy law: and nothing shall offend them” (Psa. 119:165 KJV). Obviously, offensive things will still come our way, but we need not be offended by them. The Lord is our reliable source of peace in all the circumstances of this life. “You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You” (Isaiah 26:3).“ (from http://www.victorious.org/pub/offenses-freedom-122).

Are you happy with the answer? Just believe in Jesus. 

(It is not that the Bible is wrong but rather it is the interpretation and the use of the Bible verses inappropriately that hurt people even more. Do some people use the Bible like Donald Trump's way of talking!?

The Wisdom from Sinology
Let me give you some answer from Sinology, Guo Xue.

《庄子·应帝王》 “至人用心若镜，不将不迎，应而不藏，故能胜物而不伤”。

If people have a heart like a mirror (i.e. no prejudices, selflessness), don't insist (control, holding on) and don't follow, responding without withholding, then they can handle all things without being hurt.

Zhuang Zi is the follower of Lao Zi. The one who told us of his butterfly dream and wondering whether we are in the dream of a butterfly! Going back to what he said.

We see that the reasons for our hurt come from the existence of our ego, expectation, prejudices, face etc. If only we can fully pure like a mirror, and just reflect back what it receives, then we will be fine.
The key then is let us not be too self-sensitive. It is not about me but about others. We know hurt people hurt people. People who hurt us are suffering themselves. Are we able to switch our attention from us to them?

To be selflessness, to be empty of ourselves are not easy. We know of many religions that tell us to do that.

It is not emptying but being secured
It is possible when we are secured. How can we be secured? The Bible gives us the answer. We are loved by God. We are children of God. God will take good care of us. Knowing that we have the heavenly Father taking care of us and we have nothing to worry gives us the security to be less concern with ourselves and more concern with others.

So the answer in not about less of our ourselves, but more of the knowledge of His love for us. Replacing us with Christ, being the image of Christ, is the answer and not removing ourselves.

So, you can see how Sinology helps us to have a greater understanding of men and issues and how the Bible provides the right answer for us.

What do you think?

Lim Liat (c) 16 Jan 2017