New

By Chaplain (Col) Stephen W. Leonard, USA, Ret.

New Year, new you? What does a new year have to say about a new you? At 12:00 am January 1, 2025, a new year began, but are you any different than you were at 11:59 pm December 31, 2024? Probably not! Unless you, by the Spirit of God, became a follower of Jesus Christ at that precise time and were transformed into a new creation.

The mere changing of seconds on the clock is not transformative, as failed New Year’s resolutions show. We do not become “new” people with a new year beginning.

We do become new creatures with transformation in Christ WHENEVER that may be. Some conversions are more outwardly drastic than others. There are some people whose conversion is very dramatically life-changing. Others that display more gradual change. But it is true that there is real change outwardly and inwardly in regeneration from non-Christian to Christian, no new birth to being born again!

A new year presents an opportunity for renewed faith commitment of a true Christian to be more than ever like their Savior, taking to themself a greater likeness to Christ’s life and attributes. Such can be at any time of the year, but at New Year’s, you could also make such a commitment of faith.

Sanctification is the real-life process of becoming more and more like Christ and turning more and more away from sin. Whether or not that is promoted by an entrance of a new year is entirely up to your faith commitment, or more truly by the work of the Holy Spirit within you. But, nevertheless, it involves your own testimony and belief that “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” (Philippians 4:13)

Whether or not you think anything of a “new” year, together with the whole world, we do change our calendars and, begin to write 2025 on our checks and letters, and begin to celebrate our birthdays and other holidays over again, and we are truly one year older.

A new year is something we experience in one way or another. It could sure be the increasing in your sanctification, your growth in Christ, and acknowledging you are one year closer to the Lord’s coming again, and or seeing Him face to face in your death or in the Second Coming.

It is your decision by faith if you use the new year in this way. Why not take it as a reminder, and one more reason to endeavor by grace to be ever more like the Lord Jesus Christ in 2025 and beyond; capped eternally when Jesus returns on the clouds.

That, as Jesus says emphatically, will be soon! It is dramatically more important to be ready for that moment than entering into a new year!

Encouragement