New beginnings are great. Everyone loves a fresh start and that is what 2021 is giving us. 2021 has a lot of pressure on its back to be better and bigger than the year before. Many of us have put our hopes into this new year and are eager to see the results of waiting for things to get back to normal. While 2020 was a struggle, I know I wouldn’t be the only one who could attest that this past year forced us to refine ourselves. As I can’t wait to embrace 2021 in its entirety, I want to give 2020 a little bit of credit for roughing up our edges so that we could become better people.
1. Thinking my glass was half empty.
Growing up I felt like I didn’t have a big community of christian friends and that was always something I was disappointed about. I prayed for a click of friends that would hold me accountable and give me godly advice. I wanted this presence of people behind me that would love me and always support me. It was only once I got to college that I realized how much of an impact everyone had on me. I suddenly realized that while God gave me a family that can sometimes be overbearing, I will always be on their mind (shoutout to my mom who texts me every second of the day). I also took for granted the community I had at my church. I always thought this community of people that I wanted had to be at school or always around. This made me overlook how God answered my prayers even before I prayed for it. The months before I committed to college, I had so many people try and stay updated with the college process and give me advice, and before I left they prayed over me. I realized that I never lacked the love of a community of christ followers, I just chose not to see it. Thinking your life is half empty is obviously going to make you discontent with life, but acknowledging the magnitude of God’s blessings brings joy. I always thanked God for family and friends in my prayers but I never understood how MUCH of a blessing they were. I was ungrateful. When you embrace the things that God has allowed you to have it makes you feel like you have SO much. So instead of feeling like this year TOOK away from me, I’m learning to be content because God has given me everything I need. Recognizing God’s blessings in your life does bring joy.
2. Allowing the world to revolve around me.
Out of everything that 2020 has taught me, I think this one was the hardest pill to swallow. I started my first semester of college in 2020 and I was so excited. Once I got to college I put all my energy in doing well with school, with people, and literally everything. I wanted college to meet my expectations, I wanted to make the most of a semester with COVID. I put so much pressure on college being “good”, that my relationship with God took a back seat. This is where I learned that I lacked discipline. I let my life go without making an effort to put God first despite change in my life. It’s so easy to get caught up in life, especially when there are big plans ahead. It does take self control to reel everything back so that God remains to be the reason why you are living. I had the kind of attitude that demanded friendships to support ME, grades to validate ME, etc. I let myself forget that the world does not exist for me, but for me to be God’s servant. I also didn’t see how FREEING it is to commit to serving God and not ourselves. . It is wasted energy to focus on ourselves and what the world can give us, because the world can’t really give us anything. I know this is hard when we live in a word that screams “follow your dreams” and “do what makes you happy”. But in reality getting caught up in ourselves is not freeing, its time consuming and tiring. Being God’s servant isn’t being stuck behind a list of rules, but its putting everything in Gods hands so that we don’t have to be worn out form trying to make life “good”.
3. Setting the bar low for God.
We all went into 2020 with the same optimism we have with the beginning of any year. Excited to start a new year, excited to accomplish new goals and plans. We had expectations for 2020. Nobody expected New Years day of last year, that we’d be unable to eat at a restaurants normally or go to the movies. Once the pandemic hit hard we deemed 2020 as the worst year ever, and while I’m not arguing with that, I think we’ve lowered our expectations. Lowering an expectation is often done when you don’t want to get your hopes up, it’s to protect our fragile hearts from getting too excited for nothing. But I think we are called to expect big things from God. I listened to a sermon once where the speaker brought up an analogy that had to do with our expectations. In a work environment, you should expect your coworker to get their end of a project done, but there may be the employees that slack off or don’t pick up their end. If we can trust our peers to get their jobs done, how much more should we trust God to do his job. It would be crazy to treat God as an unreliable coworker. Believing that God will do more than we can ask or think IS being faithful. When we expect more from God we pray bigger, we think bigger, and we are willing to take bigger risks for him. Job 5:9 says “He preforms wonders that cannot be fathomed…” so even when trying to imagine the craziest thing God could do in our lives, it is greater.
I want to conclude with this third point because it is kind of a driving force for 2021. We should have great expectations for 2021. 2020 pulled at us in all kinds of ways, and 2021 is STILL a big unknown just like this past year. Yet, God already knows what will happen. We all have this wide eyed wonder and hope for 2021. It’s a mix of happiness but it’s also cautioned by the fact that 2021 might be just as hard as 2020. But these fears shouldn’t make us expect any less from God. Sometimes we don’t give God the credit of being GOD. If the same God can create a world out of darkness, it’s safe to put high expectations on what he can do in your life in 2021.
“20 Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us…”
Eph. 3:20