Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him:  — Psalm 37:7

This has been the strangest start to a New Year I believe I’ve ever had.  I’m not sure I’ve ever been so glad to leave a year behind as 2024.  Not that things were horrible, but I just felt probably as lost, powerless, and helpless as I’ve ever felt.  Most of it was certainly self-inflicted.  I went my own way and followed my own desires more than I’d like to admit.

Here is the thing:  Through it all, when I felt God’s presence, it might have been more real than it has ever been in my life.  I knew He was there; I knew He was with me, and I knew that He had me.  If there is any resolution that I have for this New Year, it is simply to rest in the Lord.  I’m all the time thinking I must do something for Him, be telling someone about Him, and what has happened is, somewhere along the way, if I’m not doing these things, I think I’m disappointing Him.  I think I’m letting other people down.  I’ve become a performance-based Christian.  The thing is . . . I know there are no judges.  I know that the only opinion that matters is the Lord’s, and He has taken not one iota of His presence and realness from me.

I was praying before the New Year began that I’d care a lot less about what others thought of me and care much more about just living my life knowing that He’s got me.  Immediately, in two straight days, I had two people question me as “a man of faith,” and “a pastor.”  Both believed I was behaving in a way that disqualified me from those titles.  It bothered me at first, but then I thought, “well, this is what I prayed for.”  God never left me, His presence has remained, so it is more than time for me to simply live for my audience of ONE.  I can’t change people’s hearts . . . I wouldn’t really want to be able to something like that.  I can only live for Him and trust that He will do all the heart changing.  I can only trust Him.  I can only listen to that still small voice that leads, guides and directs me.

Lord, may You increase, and I decrease in 2025.  I want to know You, experience You, and serve You with every fiber of my being.  Let me move forward this year in confidence, not in myself, but in the God that I’ve been serving since my 20’s. You’ve grown me.  Remove the weeds suffocating my life so that I might grow even more.  There is no one like You.  May you bless each reader and his or her family.  Make Your face to shine upon them and be gracious to them.  Turn Your countenance towards them and give them peace for the New Year.  May we, Your people, find pure and true rest in You.  Amen and amen.