How to Prepare for a New Year

December 31, 2023

Acts 13:2 (NIV) While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.”

Types of Fasts

Matthew 6:16-18 (NLT) And when you fast, don’t make it obvious, as the hypocrites do, for they try to look miserable and disheveled so people will admire them for their fasting. I tell you the truth, that is the only reward they will ever get. But when you fast, comb your hair and wash your face. Then no one will notice that you are fasting, except your Father, who knows what you do in private. And your Father, who sees everything, will reward you.

connects us to God.

disconnects us from the world.

1 John 2:15-17 (MSG) Don’t love the world’s ways. Don’t love the world’s goods. Love of the world squeezes out love for the Father. Practically everything that goes on in the world—wanting your own way, wanting everything for yourself, wanting to appear important— has nothing to do with the Father. It just isolates you from him. The world and all its wanting, wanting, wanting is on the way out—but whoever does what God wants is set for eternity.

• Your .

Ezra 8:21 (NIV) I proclaimed a fast, so that we might humble ourselves before our God and ask him for a safe journey for us and our children, with all our possessions.

• Your .

1 Corinthians 9:27 (NLT) I discipline my body like an athlete, training it to do what it should. Otherwise, I fear that after preaching to others I myself might be disqualified.

• Your .

Acts 13:2 (NIV) While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.”

• Your .

Joel 2:12-13 (NIV) “Even now,” declares the LORD, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.” Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the LORD your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity.

isn’t the best teacher.

experience is the best teacher.

1. Life: My relationship with God
2. Life: My relationship with my spouse
3. Life: My relationship with my family
4. Life: My job/school
5. Life: My time on my devices
6. Life: My purpose in life
7. Life: My earning, spending, saving, giving
8. Life: My time with friends/others
9. Life: My approach to life
10. Life: My dreams and plans for the future
11. Life: My mind and my thoughts
12. Life: My body

What should we with us into 2024?

What should we ?

1. Leave behind old .

Isaiah 43:18-19 (NIV) “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making away in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”

2. Leave behind old .

2 Corinthians 5:17-18 (NIV) Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ…

3. Leave behind old .

Isaiah 58:6 (NIV) “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?”

I can’t go back and change the beginning but I can and change the .