January 2, 2025

Stepping into the New Year

A compilation

Audio length: 11:49
Download Audio (10.8MB)

Romans 12:1–2 says: “So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. ... Fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. ... God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.”

Using this passage, let’s write a New Year’s Prayer. But not just any prayer. Reread Romans 12:1. There is a powerful little word tucked in that first sentence. Paul tells us to take our lives and place them before God as an offering.

Together, let’s make a New Year’s offering.

We can make all the resolutions we want, but we can’t change ourselves. But when we willingly offer our lives to God, He will change us. The NIV translation of Romans 12:2 says, “be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” The renewing of our mind requires inward change and comes from God at work in us. It requires diligence on our part. It requires changing our thoughts, our priorities, and goals to be aligned with those of Christ.

It’s baby steps. And it doesn’t require changing everything all at once.

Let’s begin today with our first step ... a simple prayer, offering our hearts to God.

How do we do this?

We’re going to write a prayer together. I’ll start. You finish.

Heavenly Father, I praise You this day as Elohim, God my Creator. You are the Author of my life. You are the Strength of my heart and my Portion forever. You are all I need. My heart’s desire in this New Year is to grow closer to You. In knowing You better, I will know myself more because my identity is found in You.

I want to become a [person] after Your own heart. God, I ask You to help me each day carve out time to spend with You. Give me eyes to see, ears to hear, a heart to receive, and a mind to understand all that You will teach me. Make my heart tender to hear Your voice each time I meet with You.

Take Your Word and penetrate my heart. Create a hunger deep inside my soul for more and more of You. May nothing else satisfy me more than You.

Give me a heart of humility. If there is anything in me that keeps me from hearing You, reveal it to me. Convict me. Move me to confession. Cleanse my heart and renew a right spirit within me so I can be in perfect fellowship with You.

Fill my heart with Your truth. Plant it deep so that it takes root. Move me. Change me. Transform me. Empower me to live out what I hear and learn.

Every day of this new year, make my life one long walk of obedience in response to Your Word and Your Holy Spirit who lives and reigns in me. Let Your love and Your Word shape my life. This is my prayer offering. I ask this in Jesus’ Name, Amen.

Now let’s commit together to pray our prayer throughout the year, asking God to change us from the inside out in baby steps.—Wendy Blight¹

A journey of ten million steps

The Christian life is not a sprint. It is a journey of ten million steps.

Day after day, and year after year, we put one foot in front of the other as we flee the wreckage of our sin and follow Jesus on the path of life. We step away from self-protection toward love, away from darkness toward light, away from foolishness toward wisdom. Step after step after step—ten million times.

But unless we stop every so often, and take a careful look backward and forward, our feet will gradually drift from God’s paths and stumble onto others. Like a hiker who never checks his compass, we’ll set out in the right direction and end up miles off the mark. Slowly, subtly, and perhaps imperceptibly, we’ll exit the narrow and hard path that leads to life and merge onto the wide and easy way to destruction (Matthew 7:13–14).

The new year is a time for course correction—a time for taking out the map, consulting the compass, and heeding Paul’s command to “look carefully ... how you walk” (Ephesians 5:15).

In Ephesians, Paul commands his readers five times to “walk”—in good works, in a manner worthy of their calling, in love, in light, and in wisdom. As we consider Paul’s “walk” commands, take a look backward and forward: Where have you drifted off the path? What steps might you take this year, with God’s help, to follow Jesus down these hard but happy roads? ...

One day soon, you will not need to look carefully to how you are walking. Perfect love will course through the veins of your resurrected body. The light of God’s righteousness will radiate from your every thought, word, and action. Unclouded wisdom will rest upon your immortal shoulders.

Until that day, [the coming year] is another year to “look carefully ... how you walk” (Ephesians 5:15). Walk in love—go low to lift others up. Walk in light—drive the shadows from your soul. And walk in wisdom—seize your days from the devil’s hand. These are three roads that lead us to God’s city of joy, where our journey of ten million steps will finally end.—Scott Hubbard²

Steps of the New Year

Dear Lord, as I set out on the path of the coming year, I don’t know exactly where it leads, but no matter what happens, I pray for the strength to acknowledge You on each step of my journey. Whatever joys or difficulties I encounter, may Your presence give me peace (Exodus 33:14).

“Does he not see my ways and count my every step?” (Job 31:4).

“Uphold my steps in Your paths, that my footsteps may not slip” (Psalm 17:5).

“The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, and He delights in his way” (Psalm 37:23).—Activated

I will be with you each step of the way

I know how often you wish you had another chance, a fresh beginning, the opportunity to blot out your mistakes, to change past fiascos into successes. You can’t change the past, but you can still make a difference in the way your future goes. You can let go of the memories and mistakes from the past and learn to do things better today. You can learn from the past, gain experience and wisdom, and turn it into something worthwhile in your life by becoming a better person, the person I want you to be.

You can have a brand-new start. All it takes is a deep desire to try with all your heart to live a little better, to love a little more, to be forgiving, to cast away bitterness and hurt and the grudges that keep you chained to the past, and work on adding to the world in which you are living, beginning this very moment to contribute to a wonderful future.

There are times when it can be difficult to see the positive side of life. But no matter how dark the night may be for you, there is always a way to move steadily and optimistically through it into the light of a brand-new day and way of living.

You can take positive steps each day, contributing to a brighter tomorrow, even when the world and your circumstances say you can’t, even when situations seem to conspire against you. In fact, it is during difficult times that those who are committed to being positive, productive, and effective can have the greatest impact.

So don’t give up in despair, thinking that you’re through, because there’s always a chance to start anew. Even in the most trying times there is more reason for hope than there is reason for despair. Even in the midst of uncertainty, there is an abundance of positive possibilities. Even when the world is awash in troubles, it is also filled with My goodness.

I love you and delight to travel the road of life with you, but you need to remember to hold on to Me. This road will not always be smooth. It will have its costs, its tests, its difficulties, its sacrifices, but these are designed by Me to help you mature and grow in love, in depth, in giving, and in learning what real love is. They are designed to draw you closer to My heart.

Sometimes, as in a fog, you won’t be able to see the road ahead, but I want you to trust Me anyway. Always give Me first place in your life, and all the rest will be added to you. Trust in Me to bless, protect, and keep you. The road will take some turns you’re not expecting or prepared for, but I will be with you each step of the way.—Jesus

Published on Anchor January 2025. Read by Jerry Paladino. Music by Michael Fogarty.

¹ https://proverbs31.org/read/devotions/full-post/2014/01/01/my-new-years-offering

² https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/watch-where-you-walk-in-2018

Posted in: audio, compilation, following god, new year, prayer, relationship with the lord