Happy New Year!
May 2025 be a year of blessing for you and us all. For most of us, New Year's is a secular and sentimental holiday. It can be romantic and filled with nostalgia and emotions of reflecting on the past. But the New Year is also a time to look forward. To set goals and resolutions and make changes.
Maybe you have decided to take on more responsibilities in the coming year, or maybe you want to take on fewer responsibilities. Perhaps you have decided to get in shape or make healthier choices this coming year. Self-improvement or self-care goals make wonderful sense as we start a new year. And the same can be said for our faith.
Christians have not always made New Year’s a significant celebration, but plenty of traditions around the new year help us re-engage our spiritual muscles. From New Year's vigils and affirmations of faith to John
Wesley's Covenant Renewal Prayer, New Year's is a great time to recommit ourselves to draw closer to God and each other.
Consider making this year a year to volunteer more with the church or other community needs and re-sources. Consider making this year a year of prayer and fasting. Fasting for health but also for peace of mind and faith formation. Consider adding a little prayer or worship music to that walk you make for exercise. Or commit to setting a little time for the Bible or setting the goal of saying grace with dinner. It doesn't have to be anything complex. All you have to do is set a goal of making room for God in your regular walk through-out the year.
It might even help you keep your other New Year's resolutions.
Either way, let's give thanks for another year.
May God bless you, your loved ones, and your church with new joys, health and healing, fellowship and fun, and renewed faith. Even if it's only the size of a mustard seed, may your faith grow a thousandfold this year and into the next. Amen.
"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." Jeremiah 29:11 NIV
"I am no longer my own, but thine. Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt. Put me to doing, put me to suffering. Let me be employed by thee or laid aside for thee, exalted for thee or brought low for thee. Let me be full, let me be empty. Let me have all things, let me have nothing. I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal. And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, thou art mine, and I am thine. So be it. And the covenant which I have made on earth, let it be ratified in heaven. Amen."
John Wesley Covenant Prayer
Pastor Josh
