Happy New Year! Throw the confetti. Blow the whistles. Kiss your sweetheart. The old man of 2025 hobbles out the door and the new infant year leaps in with vigor and hope. Who changed the calendar? Who turned the clock ahead? What happened to the year 2020? That was five years ago. I want to know who the thief is that keeps stealing dates off my calendar. I guess I have spent too many hours in my cozy comfort zone to notice the changing, ticking seconds that have turned into days and years.
I write down my resolutions every year. I make charts and plans. I faithfully write down important events and schedule my life to save time. I put the time aside to save for a rainy day, but when I open the calendar, I find another year gone by with no time to spare for the things I planned to do when I get more time.
Let’s get real – more time isn’t going to happen. Our comfort zone is the problem. We are comfortable with our habits. We snuggle down with our excuses and believe in endless tomorrows. What we need is to walk in newness of life. We need to repent.
The Bible has many stories of people who broke out of comfort zones to walk in newness of life. Saul of Tarsus was one of those. He was an avid persecutor of Christians. He even held the cloaks of those who stoned Stephen. After his encounter with Christ, he changed his name to Paul and became an ardent Christian, even dying for the cause of Christianity.
Peter, the fisherman, walked and talked with Jesus and loved him deeply, yet he did not rise out of his comfort zone until, overcome by fear, he denied Jesus three times. After that incident, Peter, in great sorrow, walked in newness of life. Fear was replaced with fervent faith. He not only lived for Christ, but he also willingly died for him, being crucified upside down because he felt unworthy to die the same death as Christ.
Moses was content to be a shepherd until he encountered the burning bush. He was never the same after that. He went through trials bigger than anything most of us will encounter in 10 lifetimes. He performed miracles that would astonish the modern mind, but to the children of Israel, they were everyday occurrences. He, through the power of the Lord, brought the plagues upon the Egyptians. Flies, frogs, lice, sea into blood and, finally, allowing the firstborn of all Egypt to die. Then, Moses went on a huge camping trip in the wilderness with thousands of people who were literally as volatile as teenagers. In their defense, they had never been taught to fend for themselves. They were uneducated slaves who were told exactly what to do and how to do it. They were whipped and beaten into conformity for generations. The walls of their comfort zone were 10-bricks thick. Poor Moses, who could see the possibilities, was left to shape them into a people ready to enter the Promised Land. The saddest story of all was when Moses and his people stood at the brink of the Promised Land.
The Lord told Moses to send spies into the land of Canaan to check out the land. Caleb and Joshua came back with grapes and other fruit and reported that the land flowed with milk and honey. But other spies reported that the people of the land were giants and that they could not conquer them. The people were so fearful, they wept all night and wanted Moses to take them back to Egypt. They even wished they had died in the wilderness. In short, the children of Israel hunkered down in their comfort zones and cried to return to even the worst place of comfort they had known in the past.
The Bible records, “Moses and Aaron fell on their faces before all the assembly of the congregation of the children of Israel. And Joshua … and Caleb … rent their clothes” (Numbers 14:5-6, KJV). I can just see them saying, “Come on people. Haven’t you seen miracles? Didn’t you see the Lord part the Red Sea, and didn’t we walk over on dry ground? Didn’t the destroying angel pass over you? Didn’t the Lord take you out of Egypt as rich people? Didn’t you see the plagues brought upon Egypt because Pharaoh would not let you go? Where is your faith? Don’t you remember how hard it was to be beaten and to have your children taken from you as slaves in Egypt? Come on people. Open your eyes.”
The Lord was not pleased with the response of the children of Israel. They chose to stay in their comfort zone and would continue staying there no matter the miracles, the coaxing and the hope of a better tomorrow. The Lord let them have their way. Every person who murmured with a desire to return to Egypt was sent back into the wilderness. The older generation from 20 years and up were consigned to wander in the wilderness for the next 40 years. The sad part was that Caleb, Joshua and Moses went back with them to bear with their blindness of mind for 40 more years. The Lord did not forsake the children of Israel. He continued to bless them and help their children grow into a generation that would break the walls of their parents’ comfort zones and would follow Joshua in lockstep to watch the walls of Jericho fall at the Lord’s command as they went in to possess the land their parents rejected.
As I sit in my comfort zone of 2025, I wonder what blessings I am rejecting because of my excuses. I know I could change. I know that lasting change only comes from consistent effort in the direction of the desired change, but my comfort zone gets in the way. It is too easy to snuggle in the cozy blankets of saying, “Just this once won’t hurt. I’ll start again tomorrow.” Time goes so fast that just once becomes a string of just onces, and suddenly a new year is here, and I sit miserably wondering who stole the dates off the calendar.
The word for repentance in the Greek New Testament is metanoeo. The prefix meta- means change. The suffix -noeo is related to Greek words that mean mind, knowledge, spirit and breath. In other words, repentance is not a one-time event. It is a gradual change of mind. It is changing how we think, breathe and live. It connotes walking in newness of life. If we really want change in our lives, we need to change the way we think and live every day. We must climb out of our comfort zones and see life in a new way Sunday through Saturday. It is only through this kind of repentance that Paul was able to change from Saul of Tarsus, to Peter, the great apostle of the Bible; and Moses was able to be patient with the children of Israel for 40 years.
Only by breaking out of my comfort zone can I learn to see what I cannot see. Am I missing my own promised land because I murmur and pine over things I don’t have? Am I losing blessings because I want to do everything my way? Is God just waiting for me to repent so that I can break out of my comfort zone?
Repenting isn’t just for sins; it is the pathway to new life and new visions of what we can become. God will give us what we truly seek with all our hearts. If we want to know what walls we need to break, we need to ask. He has given us the power of prayer and the gift of faith to make things happen.
C. S. Lewis said, “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.”
No one who seriously repents and seeks to achieve their New Year’s resolutions will stand at the close of 2026 and say, I failed.
