Sunday Reflections: Your weekly insights from outside the Pulpit #01
New Beginnings: Embracing the year with CHANGE
“New Beginnings are often disguised as painful endings”-Lao Tzu
Hey cousin! Welcome to the first chat of 2025! If you're new here, we focus on all thing’s growth through the gospel, with a few personal "Get to Know Me" moments sprinkled in between. With all the talk of new this, new that, I decided to stay true to the theme and kick things off with New Beginnings. Let’s get into this chat!
January arrives like a fresh breath of air, a time when the world feels ripe with new beginnings. It's that moment where you feel like you’re granted permission to release everything that no longer serves you—old habits, old struggles, old mindsets. "Let go and let God," like church folks always say. But for me, it's never been that easy too…
My human nature allows me the beautiful ability to question things.
Doubt has its way of creeping in just when faith thinks it’s in control.
I’ve walked through plenty seasons where I’ve come to cherish the relationships and blessings I’ve received, where I’ve felt the comfort of God's presence in ways that have shaped me. I’ve loved deeply, given freely, and prayed with a heart full of trust. But new levels come with new devils, and last year, I felt it. I felt the weight of it all—the need to evolve, to strengthen my faith, bridge the gap of trust in between me and God to become someone who can face this new beginning with more than what I had before.
New beginnings come with change, and change is a chore.
Change tests everything you thought you knew about yourself. It’s an act of labor that pushes you to expand your beliefs, develop your discipline, and grow spiritually in ways you didn’t know were possible.
You know the petitions I’m talking about—the prayers you whisper late at night when you asked God for something better, something more. You asked for growth, for elevation, for peace, for abundance. But change? It demands you show up to receive the answers to those prayers. Change asks,
"Do you really want it?"
and then it hands you a season where you’re forced to put in the work. No shortcuts. It wants all your pain before it hands you your gains.
Eventually you find yourself in the midst of the tension of it all: wanting the blessings but being pushed to the edges of your comfort zone to prove you’re ready for them. Change doesn’t just hand you what you want. It asks for your trust, your patience, and your perseverance. It says, "You want better? Then you’ve got to be better. You’ve got to be stronger, more disciplined, and willing to let go of the old to embrace the new.
Today’s reflections come from I NEED CHANGE| Embracing New Beginnings from a youth pastor out of OTY Dallas, and his message is simple—Act for change.
Sermon Snapshot:
He reads from Genesis chapters 28 through 30 to unpack the story of Jacob, whose plans for marrying Rachel are repeatedly altered by unexpected circumstances. Jacob, after waiting far beyond what he expected, finds the courage to take control of the situation and move forward in his destiny.
Through these chapters, the pastor highlights how Jacob’s journey of patience, disappointment, and persistence mirrors the challenges we all face when our plans seem to fall apart or take longer than we imagined. But just like Jacob, we can find the strength to change our circumstances and move towards what God has promised us.
Sermon Snippets: Take what you need
I need change
Be done—Focus on yourself
Recognize where your need for personal change it
Stop talking and Show
Change takes time
Break free from what’s holding you back
You’re called to do-ACT
Take ownership over your life
You’re the only person who can change you
Do the work
Do not think you are called to live a life of ease; the Christian life is one of struggle and yet in the struggle you must take full responsibility of your actions and your choices-Uknown
Change didn’t come to play. I say from my mentor all the time “God is not interested in our discomfort”. If He calls us to it, He expects us to put in the changes required to receive the blessings. Our breakthroughs and blessings are on the other side of change!😮💨 loved this chat and it was very fitting for walking into the new year. 🙏🏾🤎
Oh, ain't that the truth? Do you really want it? Are you sure? Just because you ask for something doesn't mean you're willing and ready for it when it arrives on the doorstep!