As 2025 comes at us with lightning speed, let’s pause and ponder the kind of year God desires for us. Our culture will offer resolutions — lose weight, eat better, work harder, travel more, achieve more. But I want to invite you to experience something more beautiful. Let’s make this the year we embrace the transforming power of God in such a way that his love lights up every aspect of our lives.
Here’s the sacred pathway: forgive more, serve more, love more and give grace more. These four holy habits are passageways to becoming the kind of people God created us to be. Are you ready for the best year ever? Let’s go!
Forgive more
At the heart of the gospel is forgiveness. We need forgiveness, and we need to be forgivers. On the cross, Jesus took the weight of our sin, our shame and our guilt and forgave us completely. In 2025, let’s extend that same forgiveness to others, even our enemies.
Maybe it’s a family member who hurt you or a co-worker who betrayed your trust. Forgiveness doesn’t mean excusing the offense; it means releasing the offender to God and freeing yourself from the chains of bitterness. Unforgiveness damages us physically and mentally. Forgiving someone may not change them, but it will certainly keep you from becoming like them. When we forgive more, we reflect the heart of Christ and create space for healing in our lives and relationships.
Serve more
Jesus said he came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45). What if 2025 was the year we cultivated a heart of service?
This could mean volunteering in your community or church, mentoring a young person, or simply looking for opportunities to meet the needs of people around you. Serving others reflects God’s love to the world, and it does us good too. According to the Mayo Clinic, the act of serving others reduces stress and decreases the risk of some physical and mental health problems, such has heart disease, stroke, depression and anxiety. “In addition, people who volunteer have lower mortality rates than those who do not, even when controlling for age, gender and physical health.”
In helping others, in other words, we help ourselves.
Love more
Love is the hallmark of a life transformed by Christ. Loving people is not easy, yet Jesus gives us the grace to love others as he has loved us (John 13:34). In 2025, let’s love more by choosing to see people as God sees them — image-bearers worthy of dignity and grace. Let’s love our families, our neighbors, and yes, even our enemies. When we love more, we embody the gospel in ways that words alone never could.
Give grace more
Grace is God in Christ doing for us what we could never do: We could never save ourselves through human effort (Ephesians 2:8-9).
In 2025, let’s be people who embrace God’s grace and give grace generously. When someone blows it, instead of running to judgment like an Olympic sprinter, let’s extend compassion. When we’re wronged, let’s respond with kindness. Giving grace doesn’t mean ignoring the offense; it means looking behind the offense to the person’s broken heart that needs grace. When we give grace more, we point others to the one who first gave grace to us: “And of his fullness have all we received, and grace for grace” (John 1:16).
Adopt these holy habits, and 2025 can be your best year ever, while you are helping others to have their best year, too.
The Rev. Derwin L. Gray, who played football for BYU from 1989-1992, is the co-founder and lead pastor of Transformation Church in South Carolina and the author of “Lit Up With Love: Becoming Good News People To a Gospel-Starved World.”