What Will Be My Greatest Challenge in 2025?
It’s one thing to follow Christ for a day, a week, or even a few years. It's another thing to walk with him for a lifetime.
The greatest challenge you’ll likely face this year is living like Christ through the grind of life.
If you’ve been a Christian for more than ten minutes, you know this is true. It’s one thing to follow Christ for a day, a week, or even a few years. But when relationships struggle, your career doesn’t pan out as you hoped, and the grind of life takes its toll, it’s easy to lose that passion for God you once had.
Maybe you still believe in him, but you’ve lost your fire. You once spent time each morning reading God’s Word, but now you’ve relegated this to a once-a-week experience. Sunday morning used to be the best part of your week. Now, you grudgingly go to church, listen to a sermon you feel like you’ve heard ten times before, and leave more discouraged than when you arrived.
Author Daniel Henderson is right when he says, “The hardest part of the Christian life is that it is so daily.” While hopefully you’re starting this new year with fresh hopes and dreams, realize that it’s likely the hardest battles you face this year won’t be intense moments of opposition. They’ll be a series of micro attacks from the enemy of your soul, who seeks to destroy, discourage, and distract you.
As you face these attacks, you’ll likely choose one of three options. Either you’ll stand strong through the power of the Holy Spirit, you’ll wilt under the pressure and lose your way, or you’ll settle for a life of distracted mediocrity.
So, how do you stand strong in the grind of life and not wilt or settle? Here’s the answer.
Transform Your Sunday Belief Into Monday Action
Sunday belief represents those truths of God that are the cornerstone of your Christian faith.
A good place to start is the Nicene Creed, which affirms the doctrines of the Trinity and the divinity of Jesus Christ. It expresses belief in one God, Jesus Christ’s incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, and role in salvation, affirming his equality with God the Father. Additionally, it highlights the role of the Holy Spirit, the authority of the Church, the practice of baptism for the forgiveness of sins, and the hope of resurrection and eternal life.
Or, you could check out last year’s The Bible in a Year devotional series HERE.
Clarity of belief is critical. If you do not know what you believe, you will have no idea how to live. But you shouldn’t stop there. The ultimate goal of being a Christian is to conform your life to the image of Christ. It’s doing your best to respond as Christ would respond if he were in your shoes. It’s not just “being a Christian.”
Interestingly, the word “Christian” only appears three times in the Bible—Acts 11:26, Acts 26:28, and 1 Peter 4:16. A more common term for early disciples of Christ was “followers of The Way.” We see this phrase used several times in the Book of Acts and it ties into Jesus’ words in John 14:6, when he said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
Followers of The Way are what I call “Monday Christians.” They’re everyday people who go deep in their understanding of God, but they’re passionate about applying this belief to every aspect of their lives. There is no stone untouched. Christ is changing how they raise their family, work their career, take care of their bodies, and interact with difficult people.
They’re Romans 12:2 Christians who are not being conformed to this age but are being transformed by the renewing of their minds.
So How Do You Live Like This?
By starts and stops. Living a transformed life doesn’t happen in an instant. It’s a slow, intentionally meticulous process that works best through what Eugene Peterson called “a long obedience in the same direction.”
It starts by not compartmentalizing your faith and allowing Christ to have full access to every area of your existence. Through reading his Word, spending time in prayer, and interacting with other believers, you’re constantly asking how you act and react more like Christ.
No longer is life about doing what makes you happy. It’s about living in a way that makes you more like Christ—trusting that this is the pathway to ultimate happiness in this life and the next.
Sunday Christians know what they believe. Monday Christians act on what they believe.
Be a Monday Christian.
