Bible Verses for Starting Over

Mercy that's new this morning

For when the past feels heavier than the future.

• "It is of the LORD's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness."

  Lamentations 3:22-23

  Written in the ruins of Jerusalem. If mercy could be new every morning there, it can be new for you today.

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

  Psalm 51:10

  David prayed this after his worst failure. A fresh start often begins not with a plan, but with a request.

• "And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpiller, and the palmerworm, my great army which I sent among you."

  Joel 2:25

  Lost years feel unrecoverable. God speaks of restoring even what seemed eaten away.

• "A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh."

  Ezekiel 36:26

  Not a renovation you manage, but a gift you receive. The softening is God's work.

Facing forward

For stepping into what's next.

• "Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert."

  Isaiah 43:18-19

  "Now it shall spring forth" — the new thing may already be sprouting. Look for small green signs.

• "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."

  2 Corinthians 5:17

  Your story is not defined by its worst chapter. In Christ, your identity starts fresh.

• "Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus."

  Philippians 3:13-14

  Paul had a past worth forgetting. "Forgetting" here means not letting it steer — reaching forward instead.

• "For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end."

  Jeremiah 29:11

  Spoken to exiles told to settle in for seventy years. God's good intentions hold even in long, unplanned seasons.

• "And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful."

  Revelation 21:5

  Every small new beginning points to the final one. God's last word over everything is "new."

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