This time of year, this blog gets a lot of hits due to people asking Google “Is God Doing a New Thing?” I want to answer that question with a resounding YES!

His Word is filled with examples of situations and verses of promise that state that this is so!

Forget the former things; 

do not dwell on the past.

See, I am doing a new thing! 

Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? 

I am making a way in the desert 

and streams in the wasteland. 

– Isaiah 43:18-19

Look at this passage a moment. What do you suppose, from this text, we need to do in order to see and experience the new thing that God is doing? You got it! We have to let go of the past. Even victories of our past and definitely “failures” or “perceived failures,” we must let go! Let’s stop telling tales of former glories, former wounds, former victories, and the pain of the past. Let’s release our grip on whatever we think we know and open our arms, hands and hearts to what God IS doing now!

Paul is definitely one great example of this:

But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 

What is more, I consider everything a loss compared 

to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, 

for whose sake I have lost all things. 

I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ

and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, 

but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness 

that comes from God and is by faith.

– Philippians 3:7-9

Even the GOOD things, must be counted as rubbish or loss compared to what God is doing now.

Look again at Isaiah 43:18-19. Note that it doesn’t say “I WILL DO a new thing.” It doesn’t say “I DID a new thing.” God promises that, now, “I AM DOING a new thing!”

God IS doing a new thing. RIGHT now. As you sit here at the computer reading this. Even if *you* think you are stuck in a rut, you have never been quite the same person as you are right now and the circumstances you are in aren’t quite the same as anything you have ever experienced before. THIS is a NEW moment! (Connecting this with yesterday’s post…)  This moment is brand new! Capture it for the Lord. He  IS doing something new in it!

In scripture, God is constantly doing the unexpected, the new, the wondrous.

His mercies, compassions are new every morning and, if you look more deeply into scripture, I think one can even say justifiably, each moment.

So, yes! No need to search Google! God IS doing a new thing! His eternal Word promises that this is so! It is interesting…God’s name for himself revealed in scripture is I AM! This is a present tense that is always sufficient in the moment…for the past, for the future, for the now. Whatever the question is to what I lack, God responds, “I AM!”

He says “I AM doing a new thing!”

I love that he asks the rhetorical question, “Do you not perceive it?” Well, gosh! If I don’t SEE it, maybe I have blinders on. After all, he says, it IS springing up! WHOO HOO! There is hope here! God IS doing a new thing…right now, in this moment. And another new one now…and now! In order to see it, perceive it and experience it, I have to let go of the former things and stop dwelling on the past. I must allow Him to give me eyes to see it!

He IS making a way in the desert of my life. He IS making streams in my wasteland!