How to Make 2019 Your Best Year Yet

Happy New Year!!

Welcome to 2019. It is time to start living your best life today.

The start of the new year is always a great time to reflect on the previous year, review where your life is, and resolve to start making the necessary changes so that you can start living a better life going forward. I don't know what it is, but the beginning of every new year always starts off with a burst of excitement, a crazy focus on making resolutions, and the hope of having a better year than the one you just endured.

If you are anything like me, you are glad that 2018 is over. It basically felt like a decade. Many factors made it feel like this: natural disasters, man-made atrocities, and a complete breakdown within our society that resulted in countless deaths, hate crimes, and crimes against humanity. 2018 was a tough year that I think we all felt in a real and tangible way.

While it would be nice to just close the chapter on it and start this year off by forgetting everything that we just endured, we have to realize that there are a lot of lessons that we need to learn from 2018 so we can make 2019 our best year yet. One lesson that I think we need to learn is that we need to love more and hate less.

Love More. Hate Less.

If you want 2019 to be your best year yet, then you need to love more and hate less.

We witnessed a lot of hate in our world in 2018. Mass shootings, kids locked in cages, rallies that turned into brawls, and the list could go on. We witnessed families split over political preferences, communities divided over race, and Facebook turn into a dumpster fire. Some of us even saw hate well up inside of us, I know I did and I did not like it.

Most of us did not like what we saw in 2018. We did not like that the worst in us was being brought out in real time. However, there is a good lesson to be learned from all this: we aren’t as good as we think we are.

Whether it was a political fight or real, visceral, hatred toward others, we did not like what was reflected back to us 2018. This is because sin is alive and well in most of our hearts. The Apostle Paul, writing to a diverse group of Jesus followers in Rome some 1900 years ago, said it best that, “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” Writing in the ancient Greek language, the word that Paul used for sin literally means ‘I miss the mark.’ Paul is saying that we all have missed hitting the bullseye that God has set for us to hit. We have all failed to meet the moral standard that God set for all of us to meet. Paul is saying that we have purposely and deliberately rejected God’s standards and chose to live life according whatever standards make us feel good. Because of this, we have all been feeling the effects of our sin in 2018.

Kill Sin or Sin will Kill You

The awesome thing though, is that it does not have to end there. If your heart is still pumping, then your story is not over and you can make 2019 your best year yet by seeking out a Savior who willingly and deliberately died for you. Jesus did this so that you could actually hit the mark that God made you to hit. That mark is to have in a real relationship with your Creator and to start living your best life by reflecting that relationship to others.

If you want to make 2019 your best year yet, then you need to live by the words of John Owens, who said that you need to “be killing sin or sin will be killing you.” The only way to do that is by surrendering your life to Jesus and allowing Him to guide you and completely make you into a new person. Asking and allowing Jesus be your Savior means that the sin that is in your life and heart dies because He has conquered sin and death (John 11:25). Once again, the Apostle Paul said it best:

“This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!” - 2 Corinthians 5:17 NLT

If you want to start living your best life now and make 2019 your best year yet, then all you have to do is ask Jesus to forgive you of your sins and ask him to be the leader of your life. By doing this, you will have a new relationship with your Creator, which will be reflected in how you live your life from here on out.

If you want that, then just simply pray this easy prayer:

God, I know that I have missed the mark. I know that I have deliberately gone against your will and standard for my life and I am sorry for that. Please forgive me. I want to start living my best life today and having a relationship with you is the only way that can happen. I want a relationship with You. I want you to lead my life and I want to follow you from here on out. Thank you for making me a new person, for forgiving my sins, and loving me so much that you died for me. Amen!

If you prayed that prayer, well done. Welcome to the family of God and to your new best life! Let me know if you prayed that prayer down in the comment section, because I want to send you a free gift so that you can continue growing your relationship with Jesus and living out that relationship all year round.