🎯 Secrets to a Successful Year

🌱 Introduction

Every passing year, for those of us who reflect a bit on life, leads us to evaluate how we did, and automatically a balance, a statement of accounts is produced. There are people who do not care much because their lives are already a mess, and they observe how they are hopelessly tossed to and fro by the inertia of life.

Each year is just a vicious cycle where they don't reach goals, where they can't grow, or they just live regretting losses, letting the days pass without believing they can have a successful life in God.

What must we do for this to change? How can we have a successful year in all areas? Because some grew financially but fell spiritually, others did well spiritually but were disastrous financially, or had unresolved family problems. Let's discover what the word of God teaches us.

📖 Base Text

Philippians 3:13 — "Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead."

1️⃣ First Secret: Do ONE THING

"One thing I do" - This phrase indicates action, which comes from the Latin actio or actionis meaning "to do, to act, to perform." Every movie has a protagonist or an antagonist, and every ending for the actors depends on the role they are given.

You and I are the protagonists of our own lives, or the antagonists of it. Remember that in the end, only one comes out victorious.

Those the Bible calls "heroes of faith" were not supernatural people; the only supernatural thing was their faith in God. They decided to be protagonists who, although they suffered and were attacked, were not passive in their lives, but rather they took action, seized, and conquered.

💡 Doing one thing means:

• Planning: It is developing a defined plan with purpose. Watching time pass is a waste. Every day is lost or won, invested or failed.
• Personal and spiritual inventory: Evaluating is essential to know how this season ended. Personally (family, finances, physical health) and spiritually (your relationship with God).
• Visualizing possibilities: Seeing with the eyes of faith the success God has for you.

2️⃣ Second Secret: Leave the Past Behind

"Forgetting what is behind"

For some, saying "the past" is like remembering everything bad. This word represents darkness, pain, wounds. Remembering with pain is a very bad sign that something was not well utilized.

For others, the past represents "glories": "I did," "I was," and they only talk about old glories but nothing of a present or a future with promises. They live on what they used to be. Some live on past consecrations, dead leaderships, old miracles, but nothing of "today I know God is with me."

🔑 How is the past canceled?

Colossians 2:13-14 — "When you were dead in your sins... God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us."

He erases our sins, our faults. It's like those drawing boards they sell to children: you write, and with a button, you erase everything. Living blaming ourselves makes us antagonists; accepting Christ's sacrifice is an action that produces change.

Jeremiah 31:34 (NIV) — "For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more."

THE POWER OF FAITH is believing in God and accepting His forgiveness. Only He erases every badly written day, every bad action, every wicked thought, to cleanse us and remember them no more.

✨ Three steps to cancel the past:

1. Accept the "debt paid" blessing: Romans 8:1 says, "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." Jesus was crucified so you could stop crucifying yourself.
2. Bury your sins and failures: Micah 7:19-20 declares that God hurls all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.
3. Forgive and let go: End this year, leave it behind with all your mistakes and absences, analyze and set a purpose, ask for forgiveness, and cross the line.

3️⃣ Third Secret: Cross the Line

"Straining toward what is ahead"

A new year is the boundary between what was and what is next. This is the difference between the protagonist and the antagonist: one decides to overcome, the other to be overcome.

📜 Israel crossed the Jordan (Joshua 3:14-17)

It was time to leave behind 40 years of failures and rebellion until the last of that bad generation died. This new generation was willing to forget their past, cross over, and enter God's land.

Stop complaining; it's time to move forward. Cross with purpose, cross with God, tell Him today: "I want a victorious year in all areas of my life." I will no longer be rebellious; You paid my debt. "Debt paid!"

⚔️ David crossed the line (1 Samuel 17:48-51)

David had to fight against a terrible giant who intimidated Israel every day. Each year brings challenges, but there are people who live defeated, fearful, with their heads down.

David was the protagonist of his own story. No one invented it for him. They tried to sink him, but he was determined. His faith in God was absolute:

1 Samuel 17:45-46 — "You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty... This day the Lord will deliver you into my hands."

Crossing the line, crossing into the new year should have this expression on our lips: "A giant year is coming, but God will deliver you into my hands."

🙏 Prayer of the Day

💪 Concrete Action

This week, do these three things:

1. DO ONE THING: Write down your plan for this year in every area: spiritual, family, financial, ministerial.
2. CANCEL YOUR PAST: Forgive whoever you need to forgive, ask for forgiveness where you failed, and declare with faith: "Christ paid my debt."
3. CROSS THE LINE: Like David, run toward your giant. Do not wait. This is your year of victory in God.