God started all over again.

But that wasn't the last time He started again. He started again, again.

The first time was when He wiped out the whole earth sans a family, the family of Noah. He saw the evil deeds of men and the wickedness of their hearts and God decided to start all over again. Imagine, the pain of seeing hundreds upon thousands of His creation swept away in the Flood. He decided to wipe away all the bad, but He preserved the good. He loved His creation and still commanded Noah to bring 2 of every kind into the ark. Even as Ps Mark was preaching last week, he was saying that as 2007 starts again, we need to see the areas in our lives that are bad and wash them away, but we need to preserve the good. We need to build an ark for our lives and our ministry.

And yesterday, as Ps Mark continued on part 2, he showed us how God decided to start again. Why? Based on the mentality and the mindset of the Israelites, who could not get out of the slavery mindset and the thinking of the wilderness. God wanted them to possess the land of Canaan, but were they ready? They needed to think of themselves as sons and daughters of the land, but instead they looked, spied, peered through the corner of their eyes and they shuddered at the thought, they cried (even before they saw the enemy!), and they decided to go back into their past. When they were standing at the fringe of their Promise and Destiny, they shrank back and wanted to even elect a leader to go back to Egypt. In other words, they rather be a slave than a son of the Promise.

When you can't see God in your future, you tend to go back to your past.

Based on their unbelief and disobedience, God decided to start again, again. He wiped out all the Israelites age 20 and above. One would think that after seeing the Red Sea part in front of your eyes, you would at least believe that God does have a plan for bringing you out of Egypt into your Promised land. But they decided to go back, go back into the past where its familiar, the whips, the taunts, and the familiarity of being a slave. Even God had to start again. He knew that in order for these people to possess the land, they had to have a renewed mindset. They had to possess first the Promise in their eyes, and hearts and minds.

What are some of the things you need to start again this year? What are the things that you have to preserve? Don't be afriad of starting again. God did. Until the fulfillment of His Promise.