Thoughts On The New Year- A Guest Post by Addie

Happy New Year, sweet friend! Wow- I can hardly believe that it’s a whole new year… 2021! To begin the year off on a high note, the lovely Addie from her blog The Musings of a Teenage Girl is guest posting about transitioning from the past year into this new one. And man… is it an awesome post!!! If you adore reading this as much as I have (and I don’t doubt that you will) head over to check out Addie’s blog… it is full of encouraging messages about all different areas of faith and life! You can also find her on her Instagram page. Now, without further ado, over to Addie!

As we all know, 2020 has been quite a year that none of us were expecting. Most people were excited about a new decade and a new, clean slate to start on, but as the year has gone on, things just seemed to keep getting worse.

It’s easy to look at all the negative things that are constantly talked about. It’s hard to have one conversation without someone talking about how crazy or different and difficult this year has been. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with talking about these things, but it’s easy to get tired of hearing the same thing over and over.

As we head into the new year, I try to reflect on the past year and focus on the positive things. There are so many ways we grew as a people this year. We had to learn how to live through a global pandemic. We learned how to communicate and create during a time where that seemed limited. We had to learn how to build relationships and keep relationships strong while we couldn’t be with people in person. We had to learn how to stay in communion with our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. We had to reinvent our thoughts on Church and what that is supposed to look like. We had to keep worshipping and growing our relationship with the Lord even when we didn’t have church to go to every week to keep us in check.

So it’s easy to think about 2020 as a bust, but the truth is that so many good things have come out of this year.

The Bible tells us in Philippians 4:8 to think on the truth, and these things are the truth. It’s tempting to think that since the clock struck midnight on December 31, 2020 everything has been headed right back to how it was on December 31, 2019, but that’s not the case. Things will still be difficult for lots of people, so going into 2021, how do we change our outlook on year?

We can start by keeping our focus on Jesus. We can set goals to spend more time in the Word and in prayer over the next year. In turn, this will change the way we look at the world and our lives. We will start seeing people the way Jesus sees them. We will look at our lives as a living sacrifice to the Lord. Our heart’s desires will change to God’s desires.

But we can’t just stop there. We have to take what we are reading and put it in action. We have to start treating people the way Jesus did. We have to take action in our own life to correct sin and wrongdoing. We have to begin focusing on the positive things.

So with this in mind, here is my challenge for you for 2021: focus on Jesus because if you do that, everything else in life will fall into place.

I’m not guaranteeing you that life will be easy and happy and enjoyable, but all the difficulty and frustration will be worth it for Jesus.

With love,