Too often New Year’s Day is but a fleeting moment of briefly thinking beyond the monotony of the old year. However, status quo (year after year) isn’t a gift of the Spirit. For a year (or a decade) to pass without inner progress toward greater sanity and serenity, shows we’ve been stuck in life’s ruts.

It’s hard to have a “Happy New Year,” without consistently happy thoughts, words, and actions. If you won’t stop your old, negative thoughts and behaviors, they’ll quickly take over and possess your New Year. That’s why New Year’s resolutions seldom work. We want new behaviors without getting free of old behaviors thru confession and repentance.

Here is a Happy New Year secret: If you consistently watch, read, think, hear, and speak sadness or anger, you won’t feel much happiness. Negative thoughts have legs and will run around in your mind, trampling your serenity, if you don’t stop them.

New years pile up and eventually make you old, but if you surrender to the risen Jesus, He will make you new. Politics changes laws; the living Jesus changes hearts. New hearts are much more powerful than new laws!

A new year without a new you is rather repetitive. Hope in a new year too often results in repetition, but hope in the living Jesus results in restoration and inner revolution. Let the risen Jesus make your next trip around the Sun a joyride. Search The Joy Of Early Christianity.

A new year is a great time to learn SPaction. All Christians are called to be “led by the Spirit,” to experience regular SPaction (Spirit-prompted action). SPaction is much more powerful than hearing the word without doing it. Make the 20s the decade of SPaction.

New Year’s advice: Keep giving the living Jesus new areas of your heart and mind, until you have surrendered all to Him.