Words of Encouragement As We Say Goodbye To 2025
- Allie Crowe
- Dec 31, 2025
- 3 min read
As we get closer to the end of 2025, what have you learned this year that you will take into the next year? What baggage have you gained that you will choose to leave behind?
The God we serve is one of new opportunities filled with grace, mercy, and love. He doesn't want us carrying our baggage, trauma, hardships, and more into a new beginning. When we accept Christ as our Savior, we are considered 'born again,' a new creation. How can we be born again?
This conversation occurred between a Pharisee and a highly esteemed teacher of the law, Nicodemus, and Jesus. In the Gospel according to John, chapter 3, Jesus and Nicodemus have a private meeting. In this meeting, Jesus tells Nicodemus, "Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again." Understandably, Nicodemus is confused and asks how someone can be born if they are old because they cannot climb back into their mother's womb. The Greek words found in Jesus's comment, gennaó anóthen, translate as 'born from above.' A widely held teaching was that anyone descended from Abraham was automatically guaranteed entrance into heaven. In fact, there are some teachings in Judaism that Abraham stands guard near the gates of Hell to make sure none of his descendants enter by mistake.(1)
Jesus is squashing this teaching to the great Nicodemus. He tells Nicodemus that humanity doesn't need reformation. Humanity needs a profound conversion through the Holy Spirit. What's the difference, right? Reformation is more external, whereas conversion is more profound and internal. Through conversion, the heart goes from spiritual death to new life. When this happens, the reformation, changing of external actions and attitudes, will be more likely to last. Charles Spurgeon once wrote: “A man may cast away many vices, forsake many lusts in which he indulged, and conquer evil habits, but no man in the world can make himself to be born of God; though he should struggle never so much, he could never accomplish what is beyond his power. And, mark you, if he could make himself to be born again, still he would not enter heaven, because there is another point in the condition which he would have violated -- ‘unless a man be born of the Spirit, he cannot see the kingdom of God.’”
Jesus continues to teach Nicodemus by saying, "Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.” In Numbers 21, Moses lifted a bronze serpent. We need to understand that a serpent was considered a symbol of evil; however, because the serpent was bronze, it became a symbol of biblical judgment. (2) We do not know if the serpent on the pole for Moses was vertical or horizontal. If it lay horizontally, it would have made the shape of the cross. Either way, the Son of Man, Jesus of Nazareth, would be sinless in every way, taking the sin of the world upon him, and being the one who deals with the divine judgment for us that we all deserve. As Theologian, Alexander Maclaren said, “He must die because He would save, and He would save because He did love."
God did not send his son to condemn the world, but to save it. He sent his son to rescue, provide hope, and heal a broken world. When you think about the end of 2025, what ways can you reflect on how God provided you hope and healing? In what ways did God bring you through the darkness and into light? In what ways can you take the lessons, experiences, and circumstances from 2025 into 2026 without carrying baggage that keeps you from being a new creation? If you do not know Jesus, how can I help you get introduced? He will not demand a relationship; he offers one only if you want it.
Life is too short to bring unnecessary things along. You can't take anything with you when you leave this world, so why take unnecessary things with you into a new chapter, a new year? From everyone at the Westernport Church of the Brethren, we wish you a Happy New Year. "It's not too late. God can still use what's left and make it beautiful again."
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