OK, I know, screwdrivers are intended to be used to attach and remove small metallic threaded fasteners, but sometimes, honestly, it is easier to grab a screwdriver than a pry-bar.  Unfortunately, the last time that I tried this I broke the tip off of my nice Craftsman Professional flathead screwdriver.  But you see, that is precisely why I own Craftsman tools.  I returned my broken implement to Sears yesterday; and just as they promised, I received a brand new one, no questions asked.  Guaranteed for life, they call it.  How cool is that?

As we embark on a new year, even a new decade, it would be good for us to remember that our King has offered a similar if not much better promise.  ‘If anyone is in Christ’, Paul writes, ‘he is a new creation; the old is gone, the new has come’ (2 Cor 5:17).  As my pastor Rob is famous for saying, Jesus is all about offering New Beginnings.

The cool thing is that it doesn’t matter whether we are broken from using our ‘tools’ as they were intended – in His service – or stupidly as we are sometimes known to do.  2009 was a great year for me.  God did some awesome things through Knight Vision and through His call on my life, but not all of it was without pain.  Further, if I am honest, there are events in the last twelve months that I would rather forget, places where I should not have gone, things that I should not have done.  And so I am claiming another of Paul’s words as mine for 2010: ‘Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.' (Phil 3:12-14).

Guaranteed for LIFE – that’s our promise. 

To the King,

David