Happy New Year Readers!

I hope everyone had an amazing holiday and are ready to jump into a new year. If you’ve read my 2023 blog post, Abundant Love, you know that I tend to think of the start of the year in a more academic setting, so the New Year always feels more like the middle of the year. I am, however, not working in academia this time around so I’m hoping that January doesn’t feel like the month that never ends. Not working a regular nine to five has definitely turned my sense of time upside down, in a good way I think.

Nevertheless, here we are in the New Year. New expectations, new dreams, new plans, new hopes for the future. In my last New Year’s post, I talked about the abundant love of God. And He really showed me that abundance last year. I was blessed in travel opportunities this past year beyond what I could have ever imagined. What a good God we serve. But more than that my relationship with God grew more abundant as well, and in that growth the Holy Spirit convicts me of the changes I need to make in my life to be a better follower of Christ. 

I feel this conviction for change so strongly in our everyday lives. I see how much our society has changed since my early childhood. There is so much selfishness in our world, so many people living according to their own rules, and the theory of relative morality, or “to each their own,” is so widespread. It devours our youth; it spreads like a disease into our culture. If nobody can agree on what is good and what is bad, then how do we keep functioning as a society? I feel like we need this new year to reset and repent.

I’ve been studying in the book of Jeremiah; you guys know I love that weeping prophet. As I was studying, I felt that even though Jeremiah’s words were directed to the Israelite nation, so much could be true of our own nation of the U.S. today.

Jeremiah pronounces the word of the Lord stating, “And I brought you into a plentiful land to enjoy its fruits and its good things. But when you came in, you defiled my land and made my heritage an abomination” Jeremiah 2:7 ESV.

Now I understand the U.S. is not the promised land, nor are we the chosen people, but this verse rings true to us today because of how the U.S. holds the world leader status. God creates everything, He created the U.S. and we have been blessed in abundance so much so that other people leave their countries to come live here. But look what we are doing to our country, how selfish we’ve become, how crooked our leaders have become, how unjust we’ve been to those that deserve justice. Money is king in our country, we idolize it, we bow down to those who have it. We have made our country an abomination in God’s eyes.

But just like God would not stand for the treachery, deceitfulness, and idolatry of the Israelites, He won’t stand for other nations who are just as bad, probably worse. 

Jeremiah 12:17 states, “But if any nation will not listen, then I will utterly pluck it up and destroy it, declares the Lord” ESV. Ancient Israel did not listen, and they were sent into captivity, their nation destroyed. 

I feel like the same is waiting for us if we don’t change our ways. Our sins are the same as they were back then.

“Thus says the Lord: ‘Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the Lord’” Jeremiah 17:5 ESV.

We, as a nation, have turned our hearts away from the Lord. We have each turned to our own understanding instead of turning toward God. 

But there is still hope to turn it around, we don’t have to make the same mistake Israel did. “…Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people. And walk in all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you” Jeremiah 7: 23 ESV.

There is so much to learn from the book of Jeremiah. So many ways I can feel the conviction of the Holy Spirit to help my nation turn back to God. And so, I will pray, so I will write, so I will share His love with others so that our nation can repent of our wrong doings and come back into agreement with God and the ways in which He commands us to walk.

As I prepare to face the challenges and goal chasings of the new year with the reminder that our country needs to change, I’ve been led to a verse I’d like to capitulate this year.  Matthew 20:16 ESV states, “So the last will be first, and the first last.”

This verse is repeated many times in the New Testament throughout the Gospels. God has really laid this on my heart to actualize this year. To be a good follower of Christ, we must put others above ourselves, we must place their needs above our own, we must relinquish this idea of “living our truths”. Selfishness needs to be let go and replaced with selflessness. 

I want to purposefully strive for this, this year. I feel God calling me to it. As long as it lines up with the Bible, I want to try to put others’ needs before my own, I want to be last so that I can be one of the first when God calls me into His Kingdom. I know this will be a hard learning curve, but God is with us through every storm and every situation. We can trust He will be with us no matter what. 

What is God calling you to this year?

“So the last will be first, and the first last.” Matthew 20:16 ESV