New Moons — New Beginnings

Tuesday, July 1 at sunset until sunset the 2nd is the beginning of a Biblical month in God’s calendar. In Biblical terminology, it is called a “new moon” or new month. As Hebrew literature shows, every new moon was a time when Israel’s leaders were inspired by God to open the sanctuary for a special purpose. God encouraged the believers to bring all long term cares, burdens, sins, fears, regrets, dreads and problems to be turned over to God. As they knelt and bowed forward or prostrated themselves before God at the altar, they epitomized the full and true meaning of worship – surrendering all that we have and are to God in exchange for all that He has and is.

We surrender our weekly concerns to Jesus on the weekly Sabbath day. Longer-term burdens and sins were to be surrendered on the occasion of the new moon. The last new moon of the year (the previous one to the new year) was a special one, allowing believers to turn over all the burdens of the year that had piled up in their lives up to that point to God in order to approach the first new moon of the new year with a clean slate. We can utilize the first new moon of the year to turn over all burdens we had not previously relinquished to Jesus, our Burden-bearer. We thus start the holy year totally new.

A special anointing surrounds this period of time, even though the new moons are not holy days (except for the Day of Trumpets, which is a also a new moon). More anointing for release is activated at the sanctuary itself. In lieu of this, however, you may do the same thing at your “altar” or place of prayer at home.

We have not realized how serious a sin it is to refuse to give our burdens to Jesus. It is tantamount to stealing from Him! After all, He did go through unspeakable suffering to bear our burdens for us. They are His – not ours! Taking for ourselves what He bore for us is stealing from Jesus. Many of us have worshipped our cares, our sins, addictions, pet sins and worries.

Jesus said to cast our cares upon Him (I Pet. 5:7). Psalm 55:22 says: “Cast your burden upon [Jesus] and He will sustain you….” Psalm 32 speaks of David’s miserable state when he refused to turn his burdens and sins over to Jesus as well as his relief when he did. God “may be found (verse 6)” at any time, of course. The verse implies, however, that special, more anointed times do make Him more easily accessible and ready to respond. So let’s worship God in spirit and truth by surrendering to Jesus all that rightly belongs to Him!