Pastor’s Perspective – January 2026
What is your New Year’s Resolution?
Is it in any way distinct from last year’s broken promises? Are your promises more akin to wishes?
To have a true resolution you must have a true hope of resolving the conflicts that have plagued you in the previous year. And part of that hope means repenting from the things that undermine your resolve and your goals.
Repentance is a biblical term, and most people think it is a matter of the soul or the mind. This in part is due to the Greek term for repentance, metanoia, which means to change one’s mind. The truth is that Jesus would not have used that term. It was the Greek word for what Jesus and the disciples would have used, which in the Aramaic was tab or toubo and in the Hebrew was teshuva, both of which means to return.
The Hebrew and Aramaic understanding of repentance was not simply a change in mind but a positional change. In the Aramaic to literally return to the place of origin, and in Hebrew a turning or return to what once was your place.
This understanding of return might explain the absence of the expected “apology” in the Prodigal Son parable. The son’s repentance is not found in a change of heart or mind, but in the return of the Prodigal to his home. He returns to the place of origin, to the authority of his Father, and thus repents of his rebellion and willful behavior.
When we run away from God, we shake off the calling of God in our lives and live for ourselves alone. We don’t love God or our neighbor, and not even our self. Instead, we give our love to our own will. Not for our well-being but for our pleasure. Sin perverts our intentions and actions and causes us to rebel against the intentions and purposes of God in our lives. We stop using our bodies in Godly ways and become distracted by desires and preoccupied by pleasures. This rebellion eventually catches up with us and creates the means of our downfall and eventual destruction.
Which is why so many of us need a reboot each New Year in order to try and reset our priorities with resolutions and renewals.
These however rarely ‘stick’ primarily because we do not repent of the attitudes that are behind the primal urges to sin and rebel. We cannot keep a resolution without repenting from our past. It is not only a matter of trying hard to change, we must give the authority of our choices back to whom they belong to; God.
When we repent, we return to our original purpose. We come home to God. And returning to our place of original expectation demands actual change. We no longer are our own person, living as we desire. Instead, we return to the role of service to the King and devotion to the Kingdom of our Father. When we repent, we return to our original terms and conditions of use and embrace the rules and commands of God in our lives.
Don’t make the mistake of demanding to be the foreman of your own restoration. Those of us who try to fix ourselves without understanding the purpose of life end up putting in the work without ever seeing the results. Give yourself to God. Repent. Come home. And see what God can do in you in 2026.
Pastor Dan
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