"Without a plan or without action, a goal is simply a wish. We have to be willing to work; our journey is never ever finished." [45:28] (Download)

"Reset when you're weary, refresh and renew yourself, your body, your mind, your spirit, then get back to work." [46:10] (Download)

"Resolutions unfortunately were made to be broken. We know that, you know you've made them, you've broken them. Resolutions are just that, there's something that we think we ought to do." [33:26] (Download)

"When we look at the bigger picture and we see the deep hurts and problems that others have, sometimes the little things that we are going through don't seem as big even though they're still there." [52:38] (Download)

"We are bringing hope and impacting our community by leading people into a growing relationship with Jesus. As they grow, as we grow, we find that hope and hopefully that hope goes out and finds others." [54:26] (Download)

"Personal growth spiritually equals TFH growth as a corporate body. As we individually get healthier, TFH becomes healthier as God shows you on the inside what needs to be cleaned up." [55:08] (Download)

"Every day you are motivated by your desires, so it pays to invest yourself in understanding where they come from and where they're likely to take you." [46:48] (Download)

"Instead of giving into what your heart wants and deciding what I want to change, say 'God, what inside of me do you want to change?' especially internally, not just external things." [48:03] (Download)

"Anxiety often comes from a place of fear. What am I fearing that is driving this anxiety? What am I afraid of not accomplishing, what am I afraid of that I'm doing that someone else is going to find out?" [49:58] (Download)

"David writes, '...then God lead me in your Everlasting way.' And what's His Everlasting way? His Everlasting way is peace, it's love, it is reaching out to someone else in love, it's reaching out to someone to say, 'How can I help you? What can I do to serve you?'" [51:57] (Download)

You know, I see all that I have. Oh, I've got my confidence back. I put my trust in the one who still does miracles. You do miracles. Are you more than you are? Who am I to deny what the Lord can do? Can you imagine, with all of the faith in the room, what the Lord can do?

What the Lord can do, and it's going to happen. Just let the way make it through. He's going to move. He's going to move. Can you imagine, with all of the faith in the room, what the Lord can do? What the Lord can do, it's going to happen. Just let the way make it through. He's going to move. He's going to move.

Anything is possible. Anything is possible. Yes, it is. Anything is possible. Who am I to deny what the Lord can do? Anything is possible. Anything is possible. Oh, yes, it is. Anything is possible. Who am I to deny what the Lord can do? Who am I to deny what the Lord can do?

You are more than able. God is more than able. Who am I to deny what the Lord can do? Man, wow, He is more than able. He is more than able. Go ahead and take a seat. I want to thank you for coming out today, being a part of the last service that we'll have here in 2023. Where'd the year go, huh? Wow.

For some of us, it's been a year that we've said, "I'm kind of glad to see it go." We're going to talk about that a little bit today and what God would maybe say to that. But before we do that, let's do our Bible confession. So, whatever you have—your Bible, your smartphone, whatever it is—hold it up and let's say:

"This is my Bible. It is the word of God. It is life to me. Today, I receive the word. I confess my mind's alert, my heart's receptive. I am obedient. I'll never be the same again. In Jesus' name, amen."

Father God, today, Lord, I ask that you would speak through me. Lord, I ask that you would continue to guard my throat and my voice, and Father, let your words come out—not my words, but your words. Let us all be changed by the reading and the hearing of your word today. In Jesus' name, amen and amen.

All right, so today I'm going to sit down probably through most of this. This is a little different. Most of y'all are used to me up running around the whole time I'm up here, so just kind of pray for me as you hear this word today.

I'd like to talk to you today for a few minutes about resolutions versus real change. So, I'm going to read to you some 2023 January New Year's resolution tweets.

Jamal writes, "Just broke my resolution not to eat a whole pizza after saying it's not that great two bites in."

Honey Mist Auburn says, "Already broke a 2023 resolution. Good thing that another resolution is to start resolutions over."

Another person wrote, "Wow, I broke mine at 10:00 a.m. because I said I would stop sleeping until 10."

This one I really like: Dan. A lot of people are exercising for their New Year's resolution. I'm watching a show I don't like because the remote fell on the floor.

Yeah, I can get with that one.

Not the Nanny wrote, "Don't post your New Year's resolution to social media two months from now when you're elbow-deep in a bag of Cheetos. You don't need anyone asking how your marathon training is going."

Wife to husband: "Your resolution this year should be to listen to me better."

Me: "Bacon would be great, thanks."

So, resolutions, unfortunately, were made to be broken. We know that. You know you've made them; you've broken them. Resolutions are just that—there's something that we think we ought to do.

Today, you have a blank sheet of paper, and we're really just going to have one point because I want you to open your mind to hear what God would say to you. At the bottom of your note sheet, though, I'd like for you—there are lines on there, if not, highlight one line—and before you leave today, write one next step that God is leading you to in 2024.

My question to you today is real easy: How was your year? How was your 2023?

We're going to look at a couple different Psalms today, both written by King David at different times of his life. Everyone here, and those of you that are watching online, I'm sure that you can identify with one or two of these Psalms.

The first one is Psalms 145, and we're reading both of these from The Message.

"I lift you high in praise, O God, my King. I bless your name into eternity. I bless you every day, and I keep it up from now to eternity. God is magnificent; he can never be praised enough. There are no boundaries to his greatness. Generation after generation stands in awe of your work; each one tells stories of your mighty acts. Your bounty and splendor have everyone talking. I compose songs about your wonders. Your marvelous doings are headline news. I could write a book full of the details of your greatness. The fame of your goodness spreads across the country; your righteousness is on everyone's lips. God is all mercy and grace, not quick to anger, is rich in love. God is good to one and all; everything he does is soaked through with grace."

You know, as I read this, it sounds to me like David was having a pretty good year when he wrote this, right? It's all about God. Things are great right now. Things are great in the nation of Israel. Things are great in my life. I just want to write songs and praises to you.

That may have not been your year.

Let's read another Psalm. This one is Psalm 55, again from The Message.

"Open your ears, God, to my prayer. Don't pretend you don't hear me knocking. Come close; whisper your answer. I really need you. I shudder at the mean voice, quail before the evil eye as they pile on the guilt, stockpile angry slander. My insides are turned inside out; specters of death have me down. I shake with fear; I shudder from head to foot. Who will give me wings? I ask. Wings like a dove. Get me out of here on dove wings. I want some peace and quiet. I want to walk in the country. I want a cabin in the woods. I'm desperate for a change from rage and stormy weather."

Maybe that was more your year this year. You say, "You know what? I just really want to run away and hide, get away from it all. Everything that's happened, I don't understand it. I don't know if I can do it again. God, help me."

Sounds like David was very, very overwhelmed this year.

As I look at our family this year, if I had to scale it emotionally, how this year's been for my family, I'd probably scale it on a three to four. I personally, either through doing funerals or family and friends, have been involved with 20 deaths this year. Ten of those were close family and friends. Two of these persons my wife provided end-of-life care for, one to the minute that she died.

These events triggered a lot of other consequences in our lives: changes in income, emptiness, questions about the strength of our faith, the power of our prayers. You know, when you pray for someone to be healed, and then they're not healed, you begin to question. We begin to ask God, "Is it something in me? Is my faith not strong enough?"

If that's you today and you're struggling with a prayer that you have prayed and God has not answered it the way you think you've prayed, I'm here to tell you today it has nothing to do with your faith not being strong enough. Don't question yourself. Don't question your faith. Do not beat yourself up.

We have to find the strength within ourselves and within the word of God to say, "God, not my will, but your will." He loves you. He's here today. He has not abandoned you in 2023, and He walks strong with you in 2024 as we move forward.

So, all through this year, my wife and I, we had choices, right? Okay, I love, you know, the rock—option A or option B, right? You know, guys know that movie, some of you—option A, option B.

Okay, so we would choose, you know, option A is this: we could choose to stand on the promises in the scripture, like this one in Isaiah. I love these verses in Isaiah. This is Isaiah 43:2 and then parts from 3 and parts from 4:

"When you have troubles, I am with you. When you cross the river, you will not be hurt. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned. The flames will not hurt you. That's because I, the Lord, am your God. I, the Holy One of Israel, am your Savior. You are precious to me. I have given you a special place of honor. I love you."

For those of you that are struggling right now, that have struggled in 2023, that are saying, "I don't know if I can do this again in 2024," I would love for you to go home today and print out Isaiah 43:2-4. Print it out, put it somewhere where you can look at it every day. Read it. Claim the promises. When you're down on your knees praying, pray this scripture back to God. He wrote this for you. Pray scripture. Claim this scripture in your life.

Now, option B was this: we could have begun to think that God had quit listening or answering our prayers. We could begin to voice this. You know, again, when we begin to voice negative things, that's when Satan begins to use our words against us. We could let Satan drop the big thought bomb that God is mad at us and punishing us.

Anybody else ever had that thought in their mind? That the things that are going wrong with me, it must be me. I'm bad. God doesn't love me. He's punishing me. Please don't tell me I'm the only one out here. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

But I want you to know that more on thought bombs, I want you to go back into our archives on our website and listen to Pastor Terry's teaching on December 10th, and he will explain a little bit more about the thought bombs that Satan likes to use.

So, what do you think we did in our life? All right, let me tell you this: my rock, my strength next to Jesus Christ, my wife chose option A. Of course, you guys know her very, very well. Me? I chose—well, yeah, I kind of went back and forth, but I didn't let Satan drop that big thought bomb into my spirit. I didn't let him ruin me with thinking that God was punishing me.

So, as you look back on 2023, maybe you made, kept, and broke some New Year's resolutions. Maybe you nailed them really well. Maybe you set and achieved them, set and didn't reach goals. But no matter which group you're in, we all need to do a few things as we move forward into 2024.

We need to recharge. We need to reset. We need to restart.

Let me say those again: we need to recharge, we need to reset, and we need to restart.

So, as we look at what recharge means: in recharge, we need to refuel our body, our mind, and our spirit. We need to settle in and get ready to launch again. We have to recharge our body. We've got to begin to take better care of our bodies.

Okay, this again, this isn't, "I'm going to go on a diet and lose 20 pounds," or whatever. This is really a mindset and a lifestyle of taking care of this temple that the Holy Spirit lives in.

We have to refuel our mind. I want us to, in 2024, really take a close look at the media that we take in. All right? And trust me, I'm speaking to myself as much as you—the music that we listen to, the shows that we watch on TV, what we're looking at on YouTube, the movies that we're doing.

Because as we take this stuff in, it settles into our mind, it settles into our spirit, and if we're not careful, we can begin to emulate some of the things that we're taking in. I mean, the old adage, right? Garbage in, garbage out. Well, so the opposite is true: good things in, good things out.

The word of God says, "Is right, whatever is pure, true, right, good." You know that verse? Think on these things. So, let's take that a little bit further: whatever is pure, whatever is good, whatever is right, whatever is true, watch and listen to these things as we move forward into 2024.

When we reset, we need to set a new goal. Okay? Because we can all be prone to complacency, right? If we don't reset, we may end up getting stuck, or we may end up being comfortable in the current state that we're in—be that state healthy or be that state unhealthy.

You know, we can get very comfortable in the chaos of our life sometimes. We can get very comfortable in the sadness of our life and in the issues of our life because when we don't strive through the word of God and the power of the Holy Spirit to move out of them, it becomes a lifestyle to us.

You all know people that you've known them for 20, 30 years, you know, and everything you say, something is negative that comes back to them. "It's such a beautiful day out." "Yeah, but it's going to rain later." Okay, it probably is going to rain later, right?

"Oh, how you feeling?" "Oh, I'm tired. Oh, I'm sore. Oh, I'm sick." But this is an ongoing, constant thing. It's because we get comfortable in that state of complacency. We get comfortable in that state of negativity.

We need to restart. We need to get going again. See, it's okay to take time to recharge and to celebrate the victories. We want to celebrate those things that God is doing in our life.

And as we talk about that, there's connection cards in front of you, and at the bottom of that connection card, there's a place for praise and prayer reports. We would love for you, especially as we move into 2024, to let us know a victory that you had in 2023. We would love to celebrate that with you.

So, take your time today and grab that connection card and just write on there something good that God did for you in 2023.

So again, we want to get going again. We recharge, we celebrate a victory, or maybe you're still bandaging a wound from 2023, and that's okay too. Put that down too because we want to pray with you and believe in prayer for the answer that God has for you as we move into 2024.

Maybe you are bandaging your wounds from the battle, but once we recharge and we reset, it is time to get going.

Listen to this: a goal isn't accomplished solely by thinking about it. It takes action. I can write down all the goals in the world. I can have a great board, and I write down the goals and, you know, old management style, and put the time frame next to it, the action steps to get there. But if I don't take and move towards that, if I don't get to work and start doing something, all that is is a board that I'm looking at every day.

It will never come to fruition in my life. Without a plan or action, a goal is simply a wish. Let me say that again: without a plan or without action, a goal is simply a wish. We have to be willing to work.

See, our journey is never, ever finished. Our salvation is a free gift, as one of my brothers reminded me this morning. After that, it's time to get to work. There are things that we have to do.

American writer Ralph Marsten wrote this: "Reset when you're weary. Refresh and renew yourself—your body, your mind, your spirit—then get back to work."

See, again, a lot of times we want to rest on the good that's happened, or sometimes we want to rest and hide from the bad. But again, it is time to get back to work.

Cool Mod D in the '80s simply said it like this: "I go to work."

Some of you in your mind are saying, "Well, Tim, here I go again, setting myself up for failure. I've been there. Didn't stick with it. Got the failure t-shirt."

But maybe you're asking, "Okay, this year, how do I know what goal to set? Do I just follow what's in my heart, my heart's desires?" Or, you know, maybe do it or maybe end up elbow-deep in that bag of Cheetos two months from now while people are asking me how my marathon training is going?

I'm here to tell you, no, that's not the answer today. Again, Ralph Marsten also wrote, "Every day you are motivated by your desires, so it pays to invest yourself in understanding where they come from and where they're likely to take you."

Think about that: where do your desires come from? The desires of your heart—do they come from just purely material things? Do they come from the word of God? Do they come from time spent with God? Where are our desires?

And not only that, where will those desires take you? If our desires aren't coming from God, where are they going to take you?

You might say, "But you know, I'm saved, so the desires of my heart." But Jeremiah 17:9 tells us this: "The heart is deceitful above all things, and it is extremely sick. Who can understand it fully and know its secret motives?"

We've all been there. We're serving God, things are going well, but then all of a sudden something kind of bad creeps in, and you're saying, "Where did that come from? Where did that thought come from? Where did that action come from? Where did that reaction to someone who said something to me come from?"

You know, you plan it out, right? "I'm not going to say that again. I'm not going to do that again." And then it just happens again. Sometimes it's because the desires of our heart are coming from this deceitful place because we haven't fully just given ourselves over to God.

So this year, instead of giving in to what your heart wants and deciding what I want to change—right? Because isn't that really what a resolution is? It's really not maybe what God wants. A resolution is, "I want to change this. I want to lose 20 pounds. I want to pack on some more muscle. I want to get a better job. I want this. I want that." It all comes back to "I."

But here, I'd like you to change your paradigm this year, and I'd like you to say, "God, what inside of me do you want to change?" Not, "What do I want to change?" Especially external things, but "God, internally, what do you want to change?"

And it all starts by praying Psalm 139:23-24. It's the search me prayer. For some of you that have been around church for a long, long time, this is actually a song, right? "Search me, O God, and know my heart today." You know that one, Miss Roberta? I knew you did. I can see my mom sitting at the piano when I was a kid singing that song during altar call.

But the verse reads like this: "Search me thoroughly," and this is from the Amplified, "O God, and know my heart. Test me and know my anxious thoughts."

Let's just hold right there for a minute because the Amplified version has "anxious thoughts." As I was looking into the different translations, this one hit me hard because I've never really seen the anxious thoughts before.

So not only is David saying, "God, search me and know my heart. Test me and know my anxious thoughts," but what makes me anxious today? Anxiety often comes from a place of fear. What am I fearing that is driving this anxiety? What am I afraid of? What am I afraid of not accomplishing? What am I afraid of that I'm doing that someone else is going to find out? What are those anxious thoughts?

I can't control it. I don't know what to do. See, it comes back to that "I, I, I." God is here to say today, "I want to put my peace inside of you. I don't want you to concentrate on these anxious thoughts."

David goes on to write, "And see if there is any wicked or hurtful way in me." Again, the Amplified says, "the hurtful way in me." I had to really pause on that one when I was reading and writing this teaching because I've always just read it, "See if there be any wicked way in me."

Okay, for most of you out there, it's probably not wicked ways in you. You're probably not waking up in the morning with some evil plan to overthrow the world, right? You're not waking up thinking about doing something mean to someone on purpose. We're not waking up with just some evil thought to get back at someone.

But God said, "Tim, do you have hurtful ways inside of you? Are the ways that you respond to people hurtful? Do you not listen? Do you talk when you shouldn't be listening? Do you respond out of maybe a place of hurt rather than responding in Christ's love? And has this become a pattern in your life where someone says this and you respond like this?"

So we have to see if we have any hurtful ways in us. But see, the psalmist just doesn't leave us hanging in negativity and, "Oh my gosh, God, I am anxious. You searched my heart. You tested me. Now I'm all anxious. I'm wicked. I'm hurtful."

David writes, "No, but then God lead me in your everlasting way." And what's His everlasting way? His everlasting way is peace. It's love. It is reaching out to someone else in love. It's reaching out to someone to say, "How can I help you? What can I do to serve you?"

Because a lot of times, as we reach out to serve others, the problems that we have in our own life somehow don't seem so bad.

Okay, now I am not a proponent of this, "Oh, I sprained my ankle." "Well, I'll be glad you didn't break it." I'm sorry, I'm not a proponent of that because that does not make my sprained ankle feel any better at all. Okay? It just doesn't.

However, when we look at the bigger picture and we see the deep hurts and problems that others have, sometimes the little things that we are going through don't seem as big, even though they're still there, even though they're still hurtful to us. Sometimes they're just not as bad.

And if we can reach out to someone else, if we can just help someone else, sometimes that makes us feel just a little bit better in our own circumstance.

Now, I'm not going to guarantee that following these steps just guarantees you a perfect trouble-free year. We know that's not true. The Bible tells us, "In this world, you will have trouble. You will have trials. You will have tribulations."

Look at the walk that Jesus had. He walked perfect. He walked upright. He walked in love. Every time he turned a corner, there was trouble coming at him from somewhere.

But when we give God permission to put the desires of His heart into our heart, we will be on the path in 2024 that leads us to individually and then corporately fulfill our TFH mission.

And can we say that again one more time? We are bringing hope and impacting our community by leading people into a growing relationship with Jesus.

Let's just hang that screen right there for a second because we say this every Sunday, and it's almost like, you know, when you—if you say the Lord's Prayer out loud every day or something like that, or when we were little and we used to say the Pledge of Allegiance in school.

Guys used to say the Pledge of Allegiance in school. Sometimes it can almost become rote, right? Like we don't really think about the words.

But think about this: we are bringing hope. This world needs hope. I need hope. I'm sure you need hope in some certain circumstance. And impacting our community by leading people to a growing relationship with Jesus.

As they grow, as we grow, we find that hope, and hopefully that hope goes out and finds others.

See, to do this effectively as a church family, we all have to be growing individually from the inside out.

All right, again, back to that prayer: "Search me, O God. What's inside of me?"

See, personal growth spiritually equals TFH growth. As we individually get healthier, TFH becomes healthier. As God shows you on the inside what needs to be cleaned up, I want to give you some next steps to help keep you on your 2024 God growth journey.

But before we do that, I want you to watch this 2023 TFH recap video.