Turning the page

Make it stand out

Reflections on a new year

This is a bit of a belated new year’s post, but I’ve decided that I won’t be doing any New Year’s resolutions or goal setting at all this year, and here’s why:

I know that there’s nothing wrong with setting New Year’s challenges for yourself, especially when they are to improve our physical, emotional or spiritual health in some way. Its just that the kind of goal setting that I’ve tended to focus on in the past is all about setting out what I personally want to achieve in my career, relationship, ministries, family, or other areas of life…

But to be honest, I’m kinda done with it. Why? Because however much I spiritually dress it all up as ‘faith goals’, it’s really just a form of telling God what I want to happen over the coming year. It’s been about setting my own agendas for the year, rather than seeking to align myself with God’s plans.

What’s more, I already know that there’s lots of personal change on the horizon for me during 2026; some changes at work and in some other projects, as well as some major parenting shifts as my son moves up to secondary school. And a lot of what happens with all of this is completely outside of my personal influence or control…

That’s why this year I don’t really have a New Year’s resolution or any specific goals for 2026.

Instead, I’m really just trying to set an intention to hold things lightly and be open to any outcome, trusting in God’s unfolding plans, rather than my own will or preferences alone.

This feels right for this season of life specifically, but it also feels like a truer, more genuine way to move through the world as a christian in the long-term too.

In fact, I think I’m forever done with setting my own life goals, asking God to bless them, and then inevitably feeling disappointed when they sometimes don’t align with His priorities for my life.

Psalm 139:16 , which is from one of my favourite passages in the whole Bible, says this: “All the days ordained for me were written in your book, before one of them came to be” and I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of our lives as a story again recently. Maybe its all that cliched talk about turning the page on a new year, or new year being like a new chapter.

But here’s the twist…

As christians, we are not the authors of our own stories; we are actually characters in God’s bigger story.

Our current cultural context is so very individualistic, and we are constantly peddled messages by all forms of media that make us feel like our stories are all about ME. So it’s easy to start believing that we are both the staring, central character, and the author of the story that we are living in - when in reality, we are neither.

Culture tells us that we each get to carefully curate our own ‘best life’. But that ideology is only fine until it isn’t. Because what happens when we don’t achieve a certain academic marker of success, or economic indicator of financial security such as home ownership, or a certain career or salary? What happens if our marriage status or the shape of our family doesn’t meet our personal expectations or timeframes? What if our ministry doesn’t grow, or our business stays small? What if most of these things are not really fully within our gift to decide for ourselves at all?

Last year, I saw lots of the goodness of God, but I also saw good, godly friends dragged through infertility and pregnancy loss, and through divorces they didn’t choose, through scary health diagnoses they never saw coming, and through job losses they didn’t deserve.

But here’s the thing… When we choose Christ, we choose to lay our own personal comforts, desires, and preferences down. In fact, when we choose Christ, we choose to believe that to live is Christ, and to die is gain

In other words, a successful christian life has almost nothing to do with any of the cultural markers of personal success, achievement, material comfort, financial gain, or even personal fulfilment or happiness at all.

That’s not exactly a popular message these days I know, but when you think about it, it’s actually a source of real hope and freedom too, as it takes off a lot of the self-imposed pressure we each tend to carry.

When we live fully surrendered to God, we don’t need to constantly strive to work harder, achieve more, do more, be more, or tick any particular man-made boxes with our lives at all. Instead, we can rest free in the knowledge that we are part of something far, far bigger than our own, individual stories - whether it’s a season of success, failure, or as is more often than not the case, a bit of both.

So the question I am reflecting on at the start of 2026 is simply this: How can I join in with your bigger story this year, God?? And in what ways can I be a part of what you’re already doing in my neighbourhood, nation, and across the earth?

And for me, that means holding almost everything else more lightly…