How To Make the Most of a New Year

Welcome to 2024!  As you leave another year behind, how are you feeling about all that is ahead in a new year?  If we were sitting together in the same room, I am sure the responses to that question would be all over the map.  I can imagine hearing responses like: frustrated, excited, anxious, hopeful, expectant.  Another response that seems to resonate with a lot of folks is, “I’m tired.”  Business Week commissioned a study that found the number one response to the question, "How are you doing", was, "I'm tired". Maybe that’s you.  Feeling overworked?  Maybe you’re feeling overworked and further behind?

Sit with me for a few minutes and let’s consider some truths.  Truths that have potential to change our lives, our mindset, our perspective, and our thinking about what’s ahead in a new year.

The Apostle Paul was a man who had reason to feel anxious, tired, frustrated, defeated, lonely, and a whole host of other emotions we spend a lot of time trying to avoid.  Here’s what he said: “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” 2 Corinthians 4:16-18

I call time out!  Now stop and consider the scripture you just read.  What if we took this to heart?  How would it shift our mindset… our perspective?  What would change if you take your focus off the stuff that is constantly being fed to you by your favorite news channel?  How might your life be different if you could learn to fix your eyes on things that are eternal, not the temporal and circumstantial stuff of life?

I want to suggest three actions that every follower of Christ can apply to life. 

1.  PRAY.

Prayer is one of the greatest ways for us to be more eternally minded than temporary minded.  Colossians 3:1-2: “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.”

Here's a thought about prayer.  The most personal and beneficial aspect of prayer is CONNECTING WITH GOD.  An old song puts it well… the things of this earth grow strangely dim in the light of your glory and grace.  The title of the song says is all… Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus.  One aspect of prayer is that prayer that connects with God keeps you grounded in Heaven’s realities.

It is this aspect of prayer that makes it possible to dump the stuff of this earth and find a new attitude, a new mind, and a new heart.   Many of the Psalms show us how this works.  Many of the Psalms begin with the writer lamenting his situation and circumstance in life. Full of doubt, discouragement, and fear, he's holding an attitude (or maybe the attitude is holding him) colored by anger and resentment. He’s upset with the people around him and the circumstances he is facing. But how many of you know the beginning doesn’t have to be the end?  As the Psalmist connects with God, something shifts.  As a result, he begins to declare....'Oh Lord, you alone are my God' and 'I worship you', and 'God, have your way'.  So, what happened?  Somewhere from the beginning of that Psalm to the end of that Psalm, his focus shifted, his thinking changed, his priorities changed.  Instead of focusing on all the stuff around him that was wrong, he started focusing on the stuff of Heaven, the realities of God, and his attitude changed.  The point is clear, this happened in the presence of God as he connected with God in prayer.  

Let's make it our goal in 2024, that prayer is going to be a priority, so that we are more eternally focused than temporary focused.  The second thing is this, SERVE.

2.  SERVE

Did you know that serving is one of the greatest ways that you can be eternally minded. When you are serving others and doing it from the right motivations, it is incredibly rewarding.  Find your place and serve others with love and you will be making a significant contribution.  

Consider the instruction of 1 Peter 4:10: “As each one has received a special gift, employ it in serving one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.”

Because motivation matters, make sure your motivation is rightly aligned with God’s purposes.  Let me offer a word of caution.  Don't serve for fear that if you don't God’s gonna get you.  Having said that, I believe there is a higher and healthier motivation.  The real motivation is because you can do something with your life that really matters and counts for eternity.

It seems to me that those who serve, think less about their own issues, even though they are still there. Why is that?... I think it might be because they have something in their life that outweighs the stuff of life.  When I think of those who bear witness to this truth I think of my friend Kelly.  Kelly is an amazing woman.  Loving wife to Jay, a fountain of faith to all who know her.  She is one of the most positive and kind persons I have ever known.  Kelly also has cancer.  Her cancer battle has been waging for over two years.  She has been given a 17% change of living.  Kelly says, “we all have something… some ailment, some affliction.  Even with the afflictions, what’s more important, focusing on what’s wrong with me or focusing on how you can help lighten the wrong in someone else’s life?” Wow!  What a remarkable mindset from someone with cancer.  Her mindset is grounded in her faith.  And her faith is grounded in her walk with Jesus and her abiding trust in His word.  Kelly has found new ways to serve others in seasons when she could not risk sickness from social gatherings.  She is adamant when she declares, “there is no shortage of needs.  I can help others with phone calls, texts, or notes.”

With prayer and serving as priorities for 2024, I want to offer a third.

3.  SHARE CHRIST

If you really believe that Heaven and Hell are realities, I think we all have to step it up in 2024 to do whatever we can to bring our friends and families to Jesus. 

A few years ago, Derek came to church for the first time.  This once addicted tattoo artist (11 years of opioids and heroin addiction) showed up in our church with his wife.  A simple invitation by one of the men in the church led to them showing up one Sunday.  Derek’s past life didn’t intersect with church except for an occasional funeral or wedding. Derek and his wife experienced a warm welcome and genuine acceptance.  From that point, they began attending every weekend.  Derek began serving on the traffic team, finding relationship with other men.  Derek stepped into other opportunities to serve, mostly anything that involved a hammer and power tools.  In Derek’s own words this was the “season when I began to ask a lot of questions about God.”  As those questions were answered, there was the day when Derek prayed with one of our pastors as Derek gave his life to God.  Again, in Derek’s own words: “through a simple invite.” As the tears begin to flow, he continues, “Everyone has a Derek in their life that might need saved.  There have been so many times that I should not be alive today.  I should not have the family and friends I have, but Jesus saved me and I’m here today.  I am a life changed by Christ.”

Last week I sat with my son-in-law Nathan, and one of the questions he asked, “what do you think is going to happen in this next year?”  We talked about the current political climate, the moral collapse of our culture, and other relevant issues of our time.  Then the conversation shifted to the opportunities each of these issues provide us as followers of Jesus.  Opportunities to be a person of reason, of compassion, of love, as we seek to cast off judgement and ridicule, and in its place bring engagement.  Engaging the lost and disenfranchised people the church might have rejected.  But how do we do this?

·       In prayer:  we connect with the heart of God.

·       We serve:  those who often are the most different and difficult.

·       We share Christ:  the real Jesus who declared His purpose is to seek and save the lost.