SETX New Year’s- What will 2023 Bring Your Family?

Happy New Year Southeast Texas!

We are all going to make New Year’s resolutions. Most of us will break them.

Here are a few Southeast Texas new year’s resolutions that can make a real impact on your life and your Southeast Texas Christian family.

Losing weight. Cliche? Absolutely. Important? If you want to lose five pounds, don’t sweat it. If you need to lose forty (like me), think of it as adding years to your life – and years with your family.
Quit Smoking. Hard? Brutal. Again, think of it as adding years to your life. Children of life long smokers are also much more likely to become life long smokers.
Make a Will. Don’t have much money to spread around? We’re with you. However: Who is going to raise your kids? If that person dies before you, who is second in line? If that person dies before you, who is third in line. If you have kids, you need a will even if this is the only item on it. Southeast Texas Christians die in car accidents every day. No matter your age or your health, tragic accidents happen. Make sure you know who will continue raising your children into the adults you want them to be.
Decide what you’re going to be when you grow up and achieve it. Even if you’re forty, if you hate your job twenty-five more years of it will be brutal. Whether you want to be a teacher or a nurse or a game warden or to own a candy store. Even if it means less money, life is about balance. If you’re miserable at work, chances are you’re making people miserable at home. Our spouse and children shouldn’t suffer because our boss is a jerk or our job isn’t satisfying.
Find a Southeast Texas home church. Hopefully you’ve already received salvation. You may be an expert on God’s word and well grounded in your faith. As we get older, a home church can offer a lot in addition to spiritual instruction.

Your kids are influenced by the kids they spend the most time with. Finding a church they look forward to attending on Sunday or Wednesday and Sunday gives them an opportunity to be around kids with whom it is “cool” to talk about faith, chastity, finding their life’s mission, and where it is the norm to say no to drugs, alcohol, driving intoxicated, teen pregnancy, and the other pitfalls we work so hard to help them avoid. These are not going to be discussions that they have on the playground of their public school. These are often not discussions that happen organically at our great Southeast Texas Christian private schools – after all, many kids are there because it is a great school as much as because it is a great Christian school.
You’re probably not hanging out in bars with your friends anymore. No matter how much fun it was, most of us get to the point where if we’re putting in our time at work, with our spouse, and with our kids, there is no time for some things any more. Church can do the same thing for you that it does for your children. It can give you a group of Southeast Texas adults with similar goals – paying their mortgage, raising good children into great adults, and growing in their walk with Christ.
No matter how many friends you have today, one day they will be gone. My grandmother made friends easily. She had a dozen friends from high school she was close with throughout life. Well, throughout their lifetimes. One by one, she outlived them all. Fifty years, sixty years, seventy years, eighty years. One day she was the only one of her clique still alive. A lifetime in the church can help you make new deep friendships – and there are some wonderful Southeast Texas senior ministries (First Baptist Vidor, Bunko with the ladies at First Methodist Silsbee, the quiliting club at Crestwood Baptist in Lumberton).

Your Southeast Texas New Year’s resolutions are your New Year’s Resolutions.

They should be things that are meaningful to you.

If any of the items on our Southeast Texas New Year’s Resolution list fit, we’d love you to add them to your list – and to achieve them.

We really tried to pare it down to the life changers.

After all, you are our friends, our neighbors, our brothers and sisters in Christ. We want to have you in our lives and in love with your life for a long, long time.

Happy New Year Southeast Texas!