Priorities For A New Year

Introduction:

A. Happy New Year! This is the first Sunday of 2025!

1. It is hard to believe we are halfway through the third decade of the 21st Century!

2. For many people the first week in January is the most depressing week of the year and that is the case for a number of reasons.

3. One reason is that the holidays are over, the family and friends have gone home, the Christmas presents have been opened, and now its time to go back to work and school!

4. Another reason, perhaps even more depressing, is that many make new year’s resolutions and then so quickly break them.

5. We tell ourselves, in the new year I’m going to be more active in church and read my Bible more, or I’m going to get my finances in order, or I’m going to eat more healthy and get into better shape.

6. But then December 31st, turns to January 1st, and the rubber meets the road and we find it difficult to follow through with our resolutions.

C. There’s an old Irish New Year’s toast goes like this, “May all your troubles in the coming year be as short as your New Year’s resolutions.”

1. I would really like us to think more positively than that.

2. Certainly, God offers us more hope than that.

3. In 2 Cor. 5:17, Paul says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”

4. Paul also wrote, “I can do everything through him who gives me strength.” (Phil. 4:13)

5. As we approach this new year, I want us to be praying a prayer of thanksgiving, “Thank you, Lord, for fresh starts.”

6. The new year and each new day gives us fresh beginnings to build and change our lives.

7. Every new year and every new day is an opportunity to get it “righter” than the day before and the year before.

D. So, on this first Sunday of the new year, I want to encourage us to make a commitment to focus more on spiritual things in the coming year.

1. Today, I want us to consider making a resolution and commitment to three spiritual priorities for the new year.

2. I believe that if we focus on these three priorities, then they will help us experience a healthy spiritual life and have a blessed year.

3. Today, I’m going to do what the preachers of old used to do: they would announce what they were going to tell them, then they would tell them, and then they would tell them what they told them.

4. So, let me tell you what the three simple and concise priorities are and then we will explore how to put them into practice in practical ways.

5. Here are the three priorities:

a. First, Live in God’s Love and Grace.

b. Second, Seek First God’s Kingdom.

c. Third, Live a Life of Love.

I. Live in God’s Love and Grace.

A. In my preaching over the years, I have repeatedly tried to help us embrace God’s love for us and live in the grace God has given us.

1. If we aren’t convinced of God’s love and grace towards us, then we struggle to have a relationship with God and feel secure and accepted in that relationship.

2. The truth of the matter is that God loves us and has given us His grace through Jesus.

3. God’s love and grace aren’t something we deserve or earn, but are God’s gifts to us.

B. And how do we know that God loves us? Answer: The Bible tells us that is the case.

1. John 3:16 – “For God so loved the world…”

2. Romans 5:8 – “But God proves his own love us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

3. Romans 8:37-39 – “[nothing]…will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

4. 1 John 4:16 – “And we have come to know and believe the love God has for us. God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him.”

5. I hope these verses help to solidify in all of our hearts and minds that we are loved by God and that God’s love for us doesn’t change or run out.

6. God wants us to know that He not only loves the world in general, but that He loves each of us specifically and individually as a parent personally loves each of their children.

7. God wants us to allow His love for us to embrace us and fill us.

C. Let’s spend a minute talking about living in God’s grace.