It’s the end of 2024, and I’m so grateful that the Lord has brought me through another year, therefore I’d like to share what’s on my heart as we’re mere hours away from 2025 (at least on the East Coast 😁)

This morning, as I was praying, I began to think of how much good has happened this year, but also reflected on certain ways I lived that impacted me and others negatively. Christ has been very gracious and faithful to me, yet I grappled with experiencing the rightful consequences of some of my actions. Whether that’s bad character traits growing for the worse in me, or losing levels of intimacy in my marriage or walk with the Lord, and other unseen ways.

It’s something that is easy to gloss over when speaking about the grace of God, but I want to honor the fact that God does deal with sin or even undisciplined ways, while not treating us as our sins deserve (Psalms 103:10-12).

It’s a reality that is not always easy to wrap my mind around, but is a reality that exists and matters. God is and has been patient with me as I experienced a diminished state of my glory through the sins I committed in anger, from stubbornness which is pride, outright disrespect, and my lack of discipline in the use of my gifts.

Sometimes the negative result of our bad decisions and ways don’t show up right away. Other times they do. The grace of God is given so that we receive His unearned favor, while also calling and challenging us to a higher calling and responsibility, and we cannot manipulate ourselves away from negative consequences because of that grace. Yet still, this same grace prevents us from assuming that any tragedies out of our control in our lives is because of sin in our lives as well!

All of the different things that I’ve mentioned so far in regards to the sin we commit and how we experience its effect on us is very humbling when I reflect on it. Just when you think you have it figured out enough to articulate, life is set up in such a way that leads us to throw up our hands and rest in the Lord with a full and unreserved trust in His will.

It’s also meant for us to pursue His will for our lives as revealed in the Scriptures with a deeper passion and commitment than ever before. I am committed to loving and living for Jesus more than ever before next year, and no longer going back to the kind of sinful patterns I’ve experienced this year! I’m also committed because of the amazing things the Lord has done through this year and given me the opportunity to experience!

He has blessed every friendship I brought into 2024 and strengthened new connections I’ve made as my wife and I have served in Evangel church through an incredible Uganda missions trip in July and the men’s small group I’ve been apart of, amongst other moments of ministry. He has revealed His presence through every gathering in our home, whether for my birthday or different times of fellowship with family and friends.

He has created moments and memories through other travel experiences in America, and a wedding abroad in Jamaica that we were blessed to be apart of for two of our dear friends who are now apart of the marriage crew! He has provided for the opportunities to experience great times at concerts, sporting events, and more.

He has also been gracious in the process of Vanessa and I conceiving our first children and giving us the time we had with them as they grew in her womb. He was the best Comforter when we learned that they were no longer with us in November and we processed through the loss with Him, each other, and all the beautiful individuals He blessed to love and be with us. He was a comfort to my family and I in the loss of my grandfather earlier this year in June, and gave us the opportunity to be with our families and friends who lost loved one as well. Through this year He has, is, and always will be an ever-present Father who never left us wanting.

Father, I am thankful for your love, righteousness, compassion, and faithfulness that you have shown throughout this year. Like I mentioned above, I honor you for maintaining your standard of righteousness that there are real consequences for the way we live our lives, and still being the only One who displays the grace and love you do that we can go far beyond our mistakes and willful sin and be established in a glory we couldn’t produce on our own. I ask that you give every reader a reminder of your goodness and that as you willingly give each of us more and more days in the new year, that we will see more of you as you are and revealed in and through us to those around us. Next year will be another year for your glory to rise before our eyes!