2015. The year of new. It seems like just yesterday we were ringing in the 2014 New Year with family, friends, or significant others. The year flew by so quickly that I'm sure most people can barely tell you what happened in their lives. For those that can remember, most of that population was ready to get the hell out of 2014 and forget it ever happened.
So, then it hits. The "new year, new me," epidemic. Everyone who's anyone starts listing the things - or people - they want to shed, the born again personas they want to embody, and all of the resolutions they vow to stick to in 2015 because they fell short in 2014. The tendency is for us to always want to start over again when a new year hits because we're so into this whole "shedding" of our old selves. We feel as if setting resolutions before the clock strikes 12 is the best way to stick to those things. We create vision boards, lists upon lists of things we want to accomplish that year, and give ourselves so much pep talk on the 31st of December that by the 1st of the year, we feel unstoppable!
Then, January 31st hits and we're back to our old ways, living in the same doubts, and doing the same old (tired) crap we were doing before the transition into a new year. It's unbelievable how quickly we forget all the promises we made to ourselves to change and become better people in a blink of an eye. Usually, we end up coming back to that memorization somewhere down the line in the year, but by then, it's like "dang, I can't believe I wasted so much time to get here!"
Every year, we do the same things and expect different results. We list the things we want to improve on, and although we might hit some of those targets, we still feel discouraged within ourselves if we don't accomplish every single point of action we listed. We beat ourselves up and make these promises at the end of the year to do better than the year before not realizing we're placing ourselves in an endless cycle.
One thing that never changes though is what God can, has, and will do for you. We spend so much time focusing on how to improve ourselves, but what we don't realize is that everything that WE do shouldn't be done by us. We become so consumed in the "I have to be a better me," or "I need to get myself together," but in reality, you have to learn how to remove the “I” from the situation and replace that with God.
It's often said that a lot of the reasoning’s why we don't accomplish the things that we set out after is because we are the ones that are doing it. We see the New Year as a means to regroup, restructure, and rebuild ourselves, but then become discouraged when we don't accomplish that. The issue is we put too much trust in the "I" aspect of life instead of just putting that same trust in God.
There are so many people that credit their positive outcomes to what they have done in their life. They become so caught up in what they feel as if they've done for themselves, that they can't even notice that all along God was the one doing those things for them. We go through ups and downs in our life and let our emotions take control of how we spend our days, but one thing that never changes is how God sees us, loves us, and what He expects from us. Even when things seem like they've gone wrong in your life, the outcome after the storm put you in a better position than where you were before you were in it. Somehow though, we seem to forget that after we've conquered the storm...
It's easy to say, "I'm going to make this year great and do everything I need to do to succeed," but if you're trying to do it alone, I'm sure you won't get as far as you think. God has a way of humbling everyone at some point in his or her lives. He's done it to me, and He will surely do it to you. Each year you live shouldn't be about you solely, it should be about what you and God can (and will) do together. Telling people that you're becoming heartless in the New Year, focusing on money, or putting everyone else on the backburner is not the way that you should plan to live. "From your lips to His ears," is what we need to remember when we say anything out of our mouths.
Plan to do more of what God wants you to do in the New Year, not more of what YOU want to do. It's so hard at times to decipher what you want and what God wants from you, but I can confidently tell you that what He wants is ten times better than what you want. I wholeheartedly encourage anyone who is reading this to sit down and really ask God what He wants from you this year. There are so many things that we ask Him for every day, but most of us rarely ask Him what He wants from us. But to your surprise, what He wants for you could very well be the same thing you want for yourself. If you feel like you haven't had your breakthrough yet and you've been doing this alone, your ambitions for this year should be to lean more on God and replace your own understanding with His. Strive to work on your relationship with God first and watch the amazing things He'll do in your life. The year might be new, but your God will ALWAYS be the same.
Find the joy in YOUR journey.
-Kp
“And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” – Luke 11:9