Well, let me welcome you to this series of podcasts.

I am very grateful to Ligonier Ministries for giving me the privilege of hosting this series,

and I hope you'll be able to join me each week, Monday through Friday, as we explore

all kinds of topics and different themes that I think are important to us in living the Christian

life.

But first of all, let me be one of the very first voices to wish you a blessed and happy

new year.

That's going to be our theme this week, a happy new year.

When I was a student, I went one New Year's day to take part in a service in a Methodist

church in a fishing village in the northeast of Scotland.

I didn't know enough about the Methodist tradition to appreciate that actually it was a rather

special service.

And although I and probably they have completely forgotten what I preached on, the service

left an indelible impression on me, because it was the church's annual New Year covenant

renewal service.

And after the sermon, the whole congregation in unison

committed themselves afresh to the Lord in the words of a very personal and moving covenant.

I was quite surprised, actually, because I associated covenant theology with Presbyterians

and the Reformed tradition and the Puritans,

and not the Methodists, and certainly not the Wesley brothers.

But in fact, John Wesley had borrowed the idea of a living covenant from some of the Puritans

that he had read at an earlier stage in his life.

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