Setting your posture for 2021 …

Is it just me, or does it seem like the clock ticks more quickly in December?

Already nearly two weeks into the month, a new year will be here in a flash!

Maybe you’re ending 2020 on a high, or happy to finally see this year draw to a close. In either case, it’s not too early to give prayer and thought toward the arrival of 2021, and mindfully set your posture for the start of a new year.

Let me suggest six ways you can set your posture for a good start to a new year:

1. Get yourself right. We spend so much of our time trying to manipulate cirumstances and, in the process of that, spend little time getting our own selves in a “right” place. Considering we’re first spiritual beings (with bodies), setting the right posture before God should be our foremost focus. The content and quality of your relationship with God will set the tone for every experience in life. Starting a new year fully surrendered to God puts you in the right posture to launch out into whatever God has for you.

2. Get your head right. We live in a time when high levels of stress are considered a normal part of life. Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the U.S., affecting 40 million adults in the United States age 18 and older. And habits of irrational thinking, patterns of cognitive distortions, and an overall lack of self-awareness is common today. Launching into a new year like that doesn’t bode well for a good start. “Getting your head right” by coming to terms with your own thought life, and the troubles that produces for you, can make a huge difference for your future. The best way to do this is with the skillful help of a competent Christian clinical counselor. Spending some time learning to think more rationally, identifying and dealing with patterns of cognitive distortions, and learning to become more self-aware will set a positive posture for taking on a new year.

3. Get your heart right. We live in a culture where emotions run unchecked and reign supreme, and the indulgence of passions and desires is considered the purpose for living. “Follow your heart” is the mantra, even though the Bible tells us this: “The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?” Jeremiah 17:9. Learning to reign in your emotions, and bringing your passions and desires under subjection to Jesus Christ, will transform your posture to allow for greater peace and joy in Christ in the coming year.

4. Get your body right. When it comes to our bodies, we tend toward one of two extremes – we ignore its needs, allowing our fitness and health to wane, or we worship it and place an over-emphasis on all things physical. In the middle of those extremes is the reality that we have one body provided to us for this lifetime, and we need to be good stewards of it. Millions of people will start the new year with a “resolution” to lose weight or “get in shape,” and a month or two later will have abandoned those efforts. What if you made 2021 the year to get serious about being a good steward of your body? Not just losing weight, or “getting ripped,” or working out to look good, but to care for your body so that you’re fit to live fully and be free/fight the potential of disease? Good fitness and health will impact every other area of your life, so setting a posture for stewarding well your physical body will contribute positively to whatever you pursue in 2021.

5. Get your relationships right. Relationships don’t fail because people “grow apart,” they fail because we fail at nurturing them. Having relationships that are in distress are so negatively impactful to our lives that Jesus made it a significant priority to setting everything aside to address and correct troubled relationships. Here’s an example: “So if you are presenting a sacrifice at the altar in the Temple and you suddenly remember that someone has something against you, leave your sacrifice there at the altar. Go and be reconciled to that person. Then come and offer your sacrifice to God,” Matthew 5:23-24. How could getting your relationships in order provide a more positive posture for you to move into 2021?

6. Get your values right. When we have the posture of ungodly values, we’re setting ourselves up for a life of sorrow. Isaiah referred to such a problem in the judgment of Judah: “What sorrow for those who say that evil is good and good is evil, that dark is light and light is dark, that bitter is sweet and sweet is bitter,” Isaiah 5:20. James had a bold proclamation to those who knowingly adopt poor values: “Remember, it is sin to know what you ought to do and then not do it,” James 4:17. Many people will end 2020 poorly, and be unprepared for a new year, because they have wandered away from practicing godly, biblical values. Change that and the new year will have greater promise.

Purposely setting the right posture to take on a new year can impact your future significantly. How are you going to spend the remainder of December preparing yourself for the start of a new decade?

Scotty