A New Year’s Prayer  for 2024

Dear Heavenly Father,

As we look around us at the dawn of 2024, we come before Your presence with a sober heart, saddened by what we see and anticipate in a new year. Evil abounds. Wars rage. For those of us in the US, an election year looms. We see and experience levels of suffering. Technology blesses while in many instances enslaves. Relationship suffer under the pressures and visages of a sin-cursed world. God, we have our eyes open to all of this, and it reminds us that we desperately need You, Your grace, and Your help.

We are so thankful for You. As we contemplate Who You are and what You do, we bow in worship. We strive to keep the fear of God before our faces as we seek to understand Your holiness, grasp the significance of Your love for us, and follow the guidance of Your will. Thank you, God, that You know all things, You are powerful, and You are with us. We do not want to live functionally or any other way without awareness of these things in a new year. As a good and righteous God, we desire to follow You as passionate disciples. On our best and worst days, we gladly depend upon You. Thank You for never changing. Thank You for Your covenant faithfulness. What more could we ask for than what we have in You. We end one year where You were our only constant. You alone reigned supremely; we humbly receive your care. We begin another year confessing our need again, while recognizing Your wonderful character upon which we can depend.

Thank you for Jesus. What more could we ask for than our hope in Him? In Christ, You have forgiven us, redeemed us, adopted us, and dwell with us. Jesus intercedes for us based upon His selfless, substitutionary, sacrificial atonement as it is applied to each of us. Thank You for Jesus’ coming, living, dying, and ascending. The just for the unjust. The perfect for the imperfect. The holy for the unholy. The faithful for the unfaithful. What joy we have as we anticipate His future return! 

We enter into a new year as weak or weaker than ever. As the weak, we cling to You for our protection, wisdom, strength, and help. We need You. Although You have changed our old man into the new man, we confess our weakness against the flesh. Oh how we are thankful for the power of the Spirit to fight the flesh; yet, many times we do what we should not do or opposite of what we want to do. Our sin so easily entangles us, enslaves us, deceives us, and complicates our lives through suffering. Our foolishness disguises itself as wisdom. In weakness, we confuse Your strength for our own and so easily seek to live life in our power instead of the power of the Spirit. Knowing all of these things just impresses on us our total need and dependence upon You. 

Yet, we have hope as we enter into a new year. We have hope in our Lord Jesus and desire to be faithful ambassadors this new year. We want Your light to shine brightly through us. We ask that You would use our efforts as members of Your body to bless those other members of Your body through us. We want to be used to strengthen Your church, provide for her through our service, grow her through our faithful life and witness, and bless her in our giving. May we carefully and intentionally remember the beauty of the body of Christ, as well as our privilege to be a member.

Lord, we ask that you would help us remember Your presence, power, and persistence with and toward us. Please grant us an awareness of all Your provisions for life and godliness through Christ. Where we need to seek forgiveness or grant forgiveness, please provide us the courage to do so. Where we need to actively obey you, take the next step, to do what is right by faith, please embolden our hearts to do we need to do while trusting You in the process. Father, please provide us with Your wisdom to manage life well for the glory of God.

We pause now to commit these things to you. Our commitment is to walk by faith in the Spirit. We strive to be obedient servants, faithful ambassadors, and steadfast stewards of Your grace. As You are faithful to us, we confess our desire to be faithful to You, Your work, Your desires, Your body, and Your Word. We make a commitment to live motivated by Your love as we seek to live for Jesus not for ourselves. Regarding others, Lord, we commit to working diligently to love others as You have loved us, serve others as Jesus so sweetly demonstrated in serving us, and striving toward walking humbly in the Spirit. 

We look backwards at this previous year and see many of our failures. We are aware of many of our sins for which we seek forgiveness. Many things we will never understand until we get to heaven. We have heartaches, disappointments, and hurts. Yet, You have been faithful, always present, and never failing. Your mercy has been new every morning and You continue to choose to put our sins away from us as far as the east is from the west. Thank You.

As this new year dawns, may we be faithful even as we pray, “Even so come Lord Jesus.”

In Jesus name, Amen.

As you pray this prayer, please keep these two things in mind:

First, Make it personal.
Name your specific pressures, opportunities, temptations, and hardships.
Be specific for the people for whom you are grateful.
Change the plural pronouns to personal pronouns.
Add additional blessings for which you are thankful.

Second, Pray it often for you and others.
You do not have to pray this prayer just for the new year.
Tweak it. Change it. Pray it every day.
Pray it not just for yourself but also for your friends.
Call out their burdens, opportunities, temptations, and hardships.

My prayer is that God would richly bless you this new year.

Have a Blessed New Year!