By the time you read this, chances are you’ve already made a New Year’s resolution – tried to follow it – and quietly abandoned it, buried somewhere on your ever-growing to-do list for 2026. You’re not alone. According to Forbes, only 8% of people successfully keep their resolutions, and Business Insider reports that nearly 80% give up by February. For many, the cycle is all too familiar: motivation fades, frustration sets in, and the resolution is labeled “unrealistic” before being forgotten entirely. Sound familiar?
The Problem with Resolutions
Our resolutions often fail because they’re rooted in guilt rather than transformation. We commit to change, fall short, and reassure ourselves that we’ll try again next year. Over time, this pattern teaches us to excuse broken promises instead of pursuing real growth. When resolutions become optional, the cycle simply repeats. True progress begins when we stop postponing change and seek transformation instead.
The Point of Remembering
One of the reasons plans and resolutions may fail is because there is no pattern – no mental picture – for the success we are trying to achieve. What I mean is that if we cannot conceive of the action of doing something, then we likely will not believe that we can bring that idea into reality.
As we say goodbye to one year and look toward a new and better year, our desire is often to leave the past in the rearview mirror and never look back. Why, then, would we want to look back and remember? In Scripture, we see many accounts of God telling His people to remember the things He has done for them.
Often, this is what God tells them to do when they find themselves defeated, oppressed, and broken. Instead of feeling sorry for themselves or believing they cannot move into the future with hope and promise, God tells them to remember.
One of the keys to remembering is being present in what is going on around you when God moves in your life. How often has God done something spectacular for you, only for you to dismiss it as something “odd” that just happened to work out in your favor? If this is you, then you are not being present in the moments where God has provided. When we are present in God’s activity, we can later go back and remember – accessing a pattern of success that He has already provided for us in the past.
Remembering God’s Work
In the book of Joshua in the Old Testament, we find a story of God doing a mighty work for the Israelites and making sure they take note of it. In chapter 3, God tells Joshua to proceed on their journey to the Jordan River. They are to camp there until God has the priests walk into the Jordan carrying the Ark of the Covenant, which represented God’s presence among the Israelites. As the priests step into the river, God causes the water to be cut off, allowing the people to pass through.
Wow! Some of the people were likely tempted to say, “That was odd,” instead of recognizing that it was God. One of the things God was doing here was providing for His people, but He was also pointing back to another time when He had done something similar – parting the Red Sea as the Israelites escaped from Egypt. Remembering what God has done works best when we connect those memories into a theme: God cares, and God is able.
The Power of Recounting
As God provides a way for the Israelites to cross the Jordan, He tells Joshua to appoint a delegate from each tribe to remove a stone from the middle of the river so that a monument could be erected in remembrance of what had taken place. Joshua follows God’s instructions, and when they settle on the other side, he builds this monument. He tells the people that it is meant to serve as a reminder and a conversation starter about God’s faithfulness and His power (see Joshua 4:21-24).
There is power in remembering – and even greater power in creating reminders, both for yourself and for those who will ask why you have faith and hope in what God will do. The twelve stones stood as Israel’s testimony. What will stand as yours? True change begins with vision, and often the hope for that vision is rooted in the faithfulness God has already shown you.
It is my prayer that you will focus not on the failures of past years, but on the many ways God has faithfully provided for you during those seasons. May those memories become stones of remembrance – monuments to what God has already done. From them, may you find a vision for transformation and renewed hope for the year to come.
May God bless you in 2026!
-by John Beach
Lead Pastor
OneSong Church
1333 Magnolia Street
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