Happy New Year 2025!

Looking back, since starting this blog in 2008, I’ve written posts every new year except one. Because I rarely do anything with consistency, it’s surprising to realize this is my 16th record then of new year themes!

I had no plans to write something this year or even choose a “word for the year.” My spirit wasn’t in it this year, and I was going to let it go. However, the Lord gave me a word quite clearly.

My husband and I were watching the Fiesta Bowl on New Year’s Eve. Every time the coach from Boise State was interviewed, he said something about Jesus. Even if it was a brief comment at the start of the fourth quarter when asked about the game, he went back to Jesus.

I commented to my husband, “I wonder what people think of that. Is he connecting Jesus to winning this game, because Jesus loves both teams?” But I started to see that no, he was seeing this game as a platform, a stage for him to make Jesus known and what God has done for their team. He wasn’t going to miss that opportunity. It wasn’t about winning or losing, but proclaiming, even through a sporting event.

After the game, I saw this short video on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/NFL_DovKleiman/status/1874482556433014834

I realized that that this coach has had a life-changing impact on his players because he’s been unafraid to tell them about Jesus. The point wasn’t whether a national audience understood this coach pointing to Jesus. Surely many wouldn’t get it. But some would. And those were the ones he was speaking to. It made me think about my own witness. Do I care to speak the name of Jesus?

The next day, New Year’s Day, having decided I wasn’t going to do a word for the year, I put my head down on my sofa to take a brief afternoon nap. As I fell asleep, I asked the Lord if He might be willing to speak to me while I slept. I don’t know why. I haven’t prayed that kind of thing in a long while. I woke up to a verse running through my head over and over. It was from Romans 1:16:

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes…” (ESV)

Unashamed. Unashamed of the gospel. I started pondering this more.

Another verse that came to mind was 2 Timothy 2:15, one my grandfather wrote in my Bible which was a Christmas gift when I was 7 years old:

Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. (ESV)

As I began to put away our Christmas decorations, I opened a cabinet to store some items. I noticed a new Oswald Chambers’ My Utmost for His Highest devotional there from a year ago that had been unused and unopened. I pulled it out, and the January 1 entry was about being unashamed. It begins with quoting Philippians 1:20:

I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. (NIV)

Chambers writes, “We shall all feel very much ashamed if we do not yield to Jesus on the point He has asked us to yield to Him.” The devotional encourages our surrender to Christ, describing how He will often bring us to a crisis, a crossroads in our lives, to help us decide to follow Him fully.

So many thoughts started to emerge about being unashamed of the gospel, unashamed of Jesus and His Word, recognizing again as we enter a new year that He is the answer to all our fears and sorrows and brokenness, that He is sufficient for all things. I never want to settle for less than this gospel power. I want to believe Him in all things. And I want to share Him and His Word as one who is unashamed because I do know Him and His power toward all who believe.

This is how I wound up with a word for the year: unashamed. As always, there are many applications we could make, but I want to see how God uses this word in the coming year, I pray for His glory.

Do you have a word for the year or something you are resolving to do in the new year? How is it looking 9 days into January? In this new year, I pray this verse from Romans 15:13 for anyone who might read this:

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.