There's something powerful about crossing into a new year. It's more than just flipping a calendar page—it's the sense that fresh possibilities await, that God has something intentional in store. Yet the first Sunday of any new year presents a paradox. We walk through the doors with expectation in our hearts but questions on our minds. We're hopeful yet realistic, excited yet cautious, ready yet still reflective about everything the previous year demanded of us.

Here's the truth: time changes on the calendar faster than it changes in our souls.

The challenge isn't pretending that last year didn't stretch us, disappoint us, or exhaust us. The challenge is discerning what this new season is actually asking of us. Because God doesn't announce new seasons without also requiring a new posture from His people.

When God says "forget," He's not asking for amnesia. He's calling for intentional disengagement. The Israelites weren't stuck because they lacked miracles—they'd seen God part the Red Sea. They were stuck because they kept replaying those miracles instead of moving forward into what God was doing next.

Memory becomes dangerous when it replaces movement.

Many of us enter this new year still processing losses from last year, still measuring ourselves by old outcomes, still using past seasons as reference points for our faith. But God isn't judging what we've been through—He's interrupting how long we've been living there. It's time to take up residency somewhere else. Time to move from the address of anger and anxiety into a new space of peace and promise.

The past can inform us, but it cannot lead us. God told Joshua plainly: "Moses my servant is dead. Now then, you and all these people, get ready to cross the Jordan River." We can't move in a Joshua generation with a Moses mindset. That season is over.

Notice the order in Isaiah's prophecy: God doesn't say "go" first. He says "see" first.

Last year, many of us did a lot of going but not enough seeing. We moved constantly, exhausting ourselves, because movement without discernment creates burnout. God announces the new before He explains it. He gives us a word before He gives us a map.

This is the year to stop chasing clarity and start responding to the calling. Abraham didn't demand a detailed map when God told him to leave his country and go to a land "I will show you." He responded to the word he received, trusting that sufficient instructions would come.

New seasons rarely arrive with full explanations—only sufficient instructions.

The question for this year isn't "What will God do?" The real question is: "What must I release so I can recognize what He's already doing?"

God is doing something new, but it requires new thinking, new trust, and new obedience. Before He changes our future, He challenges our attachment to the past.

If you can't perceive it, you can't partner with it.

God specializes in new growth in unlikely places. "I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland."

Wilderness represents unmanaged, unfamiliar territory. Desert represents depleted, exhausted expectation. And God says, "I don't avoid dry places—I prove Myself in them."

The place you're trying to escape might be exactly where God wants to irrigate. Rivers don't just refresh—they change entire ecosystems. When a river shows up in a desert, the soil changes. The vegetation changes. The wildlife changes. The future changes.

God doesn't send rivers to make dry places tolerable. He sends them to make them livable.

This matters because most of us are praying for relief from pressure, for a break from stress, for a pause from difficulty. But God says, "I'm not giving you a break—I'm giving you a breakthrough."

The discomfort of a season isn't proof that you missed God. It's often proof that you're exactly where you need to be.

This year isn't about surviving your environment—it's about transforming it through you. You're not just coming out refreshed; you're coming out repositioned. 

When God sends a river, the environment has to adjust.

Isaiah 43:20

God doesn't send provisions to protect comfort.

• He sends provisions to sustain obedience. 
• Water shows up after direction is established.
• The river appears because God has a purpose in mind.

God funds movement, not maintenance.

This is a year of cultivation, not hesitation. Everything God is preparing will be sustained by His provision. He's not asking us to feel ready—He's asking us to trust what He reveals.

So here we stand at the threshold of everything new. The invitation is clear: stop rehearsing the old and start discerning the new. Release the authority your past has held over your life. Pay attention to how your taste is changing, how your tolerance for certain things is disappearing, how God is troubling the waters on your behalf.

This is the year to expect great things—not because everything will be easy, but because God's character guarantees His faithfulness. He kept you through last year. He brought you into this year. And He's already at work doing something new.

The question is: do you perceive it?

Prepare for more.