Embrace The New Year! • Showered In Grace

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I usually want to embrace the New Year with the best of intentions. We get a fresh start when the calendar turns over into a new year. It’s the perfect time to lighten our load or get a little do over.

I usually create a heavier burden by developing a big list of things I want to accomplish. Like lose more weight, eat healthier, read my Bible more, exercise more, blah, blah, blah. Usually, three weeks or so into the New Year, I feel like I’ve failed at most of my resolutions.

That’s the hard part about being a recovering perfectionist. The minute you have a little bit of “unhealthy” food, skip a workout, ignore your Bible, etc. you battle with the evil little perfectionist in your head who says you’ve failed. It’s crazy-making behavior! I’ve struggled with this crazy cycle most of my adult life. It creates anxiety and is such a self-defeating way to look at the world!

It’s exhausting wanting to be more and feeling like you are never enough.

Let the light of Jesus shine in you this New Year! Share on X

Can you relate at all?

What if we stopped wanting to do more and just rested in Jesus? What if He was more than enough?

Embrace the New Year by embracing God’s truth! Jesus is enough.

I recently found myself filled with anxiety over the unending to-do list in my head!

I sat in the early morning quiet, pondering the year ahead, with a warm cup of coffee in my hand. All the things I hoped to accomplish made my heart race. As I paused to quiet my mind and rest in the presence of the Lord, the sun began to rise and a feeling of peace settled into my soul. A gentle whisper settled into my soul, “You are more than enough because of Jesus.”

I am leaving you with a gift—peace of mind and heart. And the peace I give is a gift the world cannot give. So don’t be troubled or afraid.
John 14:27 NLT

I like how verses 25-27 in The Message says: “I’m telling you these things while I’m still living with you. The Friend, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send at my request, will make everything plain to you. He will remind you of all the things I have told you. I’m leaving you well and whole. That’s my parting gift to you. Peace. I don’t leave you the way you’re used to being left—feeling abandoned, bereft. So don’t be upset. Don’t be distraught.”

I love the image that Jesus’ parting gift to us was peace. I could use more peace these days, couldn’t you? The world is CRAZY!

Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 4: 6-7

embrace the new year by letting the light of Jesus shine in you!

Embrace the new year with endless possibilities for peace as we rest in Jesus.

As I sat in silence that morning, a glimmer of sunshine on the newly fallen snow caught my eye and it gave me hope for a year filled with endless opportunities to find peace by resting in Jesus.

Peace awaits us. We can choose to look for the good in this world. Maybe we start embracing kindness or choosing faith in Jesus over faith in self. Or we decide to calm our anxiety by reminding ourselves we can’t control everything, no matter how strongly we want to! We can stop filling up our to-do list with things that give us a false sense of worthiness and choose to spend more time with Jesus.

My unofficial to-do list went right out the window as I began to reflect on a year of just resting in my identity in Christ.

I was reminded of Matthew 5: 14-15 –

“You are the light of the world—like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden.No one lights a lamp and then puts it under a basket. Instead, a lamp is placed on a stand, where it gives light to everyone in the house.
Matthew 5: 14-15 NLT

Be the light in a dark, fallen world this New Year.