Preparing Your Heart for the New Year

You did it — you survived Christmas! You have about half a week left in 2025. Do you know what that means? It’s time to start thinking about your New Year’s resolutions.

Maybe you’re not a “planner,” and the idea of planning resolutions feels a little intense. Even so, here are six quick thoughts that might stir up a desire to set some good goals—and start thinking about them today.

1. Know why resolutions are worth your time.

There’s no other season when you’re constantly reminded to evaluate your habits and make new goals. Most of the year, we’re too busy with normal life to pause and reflect on how we’re living. But New Year’s is different. It’s the annual “start over” moment. So why not seize the opportunity and purposefully make better choices?

2. Start planning now.

It takes real thought to choose goals worth sticking with for an entire year. If you make resolutions half-heartedly, you might quickly learn they aren’t worth any effort. That’s not the end of the world, but it is a missed opportunity to think through what truly matters.

Spend some time praying about the areas of your life that need the most growth. Don’t just pick the standard resolutions. Ask God for wisdom to see your life from his vantage point. Ask him to reveal blind spots. Ask him to show you where he wants you to grow.

3. Start implementing now.

What if you made your goals today and started trying them out immediately? Then, when January 1st arrives, you’ll already have a sense of what works, what doesn’t, and which goals are actually worth committing to. You can step into the new year with confidence and clarity.

Think of it as a pre-resolution resolution. A trial run. A no-risk, test-drive version of your goals. You get the idea.

4. Be realistic.

We can get a little lofty with New Year’s aspirations. We make big statements that don’t match our current lifestyle. Aiming high might help some people improve, but for most of us, unrealistic goals lead to discouragement when we inevitably fall short. And discouragement often results in even less progress.

So evaluate your life honestly and choose goals you can actually work toward—goals that stretch you, but don’t crush you.

5. Remember the key to good goals.

If you’re anything like me, there are dozens (or hundreds) of things you could improve on. But the best goals come from asking questions like:

• What does God want me to improve on?

• With eternity in mind, what should I work on or change?

• What in my life is not as pleasing to God as it should be?

• What sin needs to be fought harder?

• What godly habits am I weak in?

You won’t be able to turn every answer into a goal, but choosing a few is an excellent start. More trivial goals are fine too—but the best resolutions grow out of an eternal, God-centered mindset.

How amazing would it be to come to the end of 2026 and honestly say, “By God’s grace, I am more pleasing to him than I was in 2025”? Any goal that moves you in that direction is worth making.

6. Remember the key to the key.

Godly goals are good—but they’re only as powerful as the prayer behind them. God expects you to work, but he also expects you to depend on him for the strength to work.

So don’t just seek God to show you how he wants you to grow—seek him for the power to grow.

If these six thoughts haven’t convinced you to start making some solid resolutions, maybe this passage will nudge you:

1 Thessalonians 4:1 says,

“Finally, then, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more.”

Hopefully, like the Thessalonians, your life already matches the truth and you are living to please God—and you should continue to “do so more and more.” As Christians, that’s what our resolutions should be about: deciding how you can please God more, resolving to pursue it, and then doing it… more and more.