“I wish, my brothers and sisters, that during this year you may live nearer to Christ than you have ever done before.” How can you prioritize Scripture this year? And, especially if you’re a pastor or church leader, how can you help others do this?

In the typical flurry of secular articles about the new year, two messages seem loudest. Half the articles triumphantly declare that this can be the year you become the best version of yourself and achieve your dreams. The other half reject the hustle; they tell you that you’re enough as you are and that you should enjoy life instead of striving.

These messages seem like opposites, but they share an important thread: self-focus. As Christians, we ought to consider every turning of the season in light of God’s wisdom, not our own.

Throughout the centuries, pastors and theologians have used the opportunity of the new year to encourage believers. Let’s listen to their advice for the year ahead.

1. Rethink your definition of a ‘happy’ new year.

What do you wish for the year ahead? A fresh calendar brings the opportunity to examine our lives and pursue growth in health, relationships, work, service, and sanctification.

At the end of 2026, will your happiness depend on how well you stuck to those goals? It’s possible you’ll get all your dreams and more. But what if this is instead a year of grief, loss, and disappointment?

Thomas Charles, an 18th-century Welsh minister, wrote in a letter to friends, “Every new year must be a happy one, while we live thus as sinners with and upon Christ. . . . May you and I begin and end every year with, and in dependence upon, the dear Redeemer, till at last we finish our course with joy.”

We’re sinners, but we have Christ. That truth is a bottomless fountain of joy. Let’s thank him and find joy amid whatever 2026 brings. As Charles Spurgeon preached in 1885, “Praise is our ever new delight; let us baptize the new year into a sea of it.”

2. Make the Bible your steady ground.

Countless Christians resolving to read Scripture more have turned to Robert Murray M’Cheyne’s Bible-in-a-year plan. M’Cheyne, a 19th-century Scottish minister, wrote in his introduction to the plan,

The approach of another year stirs up within me new desires for your salvation, and for the growth of those of you who are saved. . . . What the coming year is to bring forth who can tell? . . . Those believers will stand firmest who have no dependence upon self or upon creatures, but upon Jehovah our Righteousness. We must be driven more to our Bibles, and to the mercy-seat, if we are to stand in the evil day.

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