Bible verses about new beginnings: 19 passages for starting again

Because of the loving devotion of the LORD we are not consumed, for His mercies never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness!

Written among the ruins of Jerusalem after the Babylonians burned it. The most hopeful line in the book sits in the middle of its deepest grief.

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.

David’s prayer after his sin with Bathsheba. The verb create is the one used in Genesis 1:1, and in the Old Testament only God is ever its subject. He is asking for something only God can make.

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Forgiveness rests on God being faithful and just, not on how sorry you manage to feel. And he does more than pardon: he cleans.

When they had finished eating, Jesus asked Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love Me more than these?” “Yes, Lord,” he answered, “You know I love You.” Jesus replied, “Feed My lambs.” Jesus asked a second time, “Simon son of John, do you love Me?” “Yes, Lord,” he answered, “You know I love You.” Jesus told him, “Shepherd My sheep.” Jesus asked a third time, “Simon son of John, do you love Me?” Peter was deeply hurt that Jesus had asked him a third time, “Do you love Me?” “Lord, You know all things,” he replied. “You know I love You.” Jesus said to him, “Feed My sheep.

Peter had denied Jesus three times beside a charcoal fire. Here, beside another charcoal fire, Jesus asks him three times if he loves him, and gives him work to do.

To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven:

The list that follows includes endings as well as beginnings. A season closing is part of the pattern, not a sign that something has gone wrong.

Then the LORD said to Abram, “Leave your country, your kindred, and your father’s household, and go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.

Abram was seventy-five when he left (Genesis 12:4). New beginnings are not only for the young.

By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, without knowing where he was going.

He went without knowing where he was going. Faith often gets one step of the map at a time.

This is what the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel, says to all the exiles who were carried away from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and settle down. Plant gardens and eat their produce.

God told the exiles in Babylon to build houses and plant gardens. Do not just wait out the new place; put down roots in it.

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, to give you a future and a hope.

Read the verse before it: the exile would last seventy years. The future and the hope were real, but they unfolded over a lifetime, and for a whole people together.

So Naomi returned from the land of Moab with her daughter-in-law Ruth the Moabitess. And they arrived in Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest.

Naomi came home bitter and empty-handed, and the writer quietly notes it was the beginning of the barley harvest. In that field, her story and Ruth’s would turn.

For who has despised the day of small things? But these seven eyes of the LORD, which scan the whole earth, will rejoice when they see the plumb line in the hand of Zerubbabel.”

Spoken over the rebuilt temple’s foundation, which looked so small that older people who remembered Solomon’s temple wept (Ezra 3:12). Small beginnings are not to be despised.

“Do not call to mind the former things; pay no attention to the things of old. Behold, I am about to do something new; even now it is coming. Do you not see it? Indeed, I will make a way in the wilderness and streams in the desert.

The former things God tells Israel to stop dwelling on include the exodus itself, his greatest act so far. Even good memories should not limit what you expect from him.

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 of God’s heavenly calling in Christ Jesus.

Paul had persecuted the church (Philippians 3:6). A runner who keeps looking over his shoulder loses the race.

I will repay you for the years eaten by locusts— the swarming locust, the young locust, the destroying locust, and the devouring locust — My great army that I sent against you.

Spoken after a devastating locust plague. God does not promise to undo the lost years, but to repay them.

He lifted me up from the pit of despair, out of the miry clay; He set my feet upon a rock, and made my footsteps firm. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear and put their trust in the LORD.

Out of the pit, onto a rock, and then a new song. The fresh start was not private: many would see it and trust God.

Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come!

Not a better version of the old you, but a new creation. The phrase echoes the very first act of creation: what God does in a person is that deep.

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

Also promised to exiles. The change starts inside, and it is a gift: God gives the new heart rather than demanding you produce one.

We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may walk in newness of life.

Baptism pictures burial and rising. Newness of life is described as a way of walking, a daily practice rather than a single moment.

And the One seated on the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.” Then He said, “Write this down, for these words are faithful and true.”

God says all things new, not all new things. He does not throw the old creation away; he renews it.