We all love the idea of a reset button.

Your phone freezes, an app won’t load, everything feels stuck. So we do what we always do: close it, restart it, hope it comes back clean. Sometimes it works. The screen clears, the lag disappears, and it feels like we got a fresh start for free.

But we’ve all had the other experience too. You restart…and the same problem returns. The battery still drains fast. The glitch still shows up. The storage is still full. Because the restart didn’t touch the real issue. It only gave you a moment of relief.

That’s a good picture of how we treat the New Year.

We say, “Next year will be different.” We imagine better habits, better relationships, better peace in our mind. We dream and hope in a very abstract way. We picture a new version of us. And for a few days, just thinking about it feels like progress.

But time doesn’t change us just because it moves forward.

A new calendar can’t do the work that only a new heart and new patterns can do. “January 1” can’t do the repenting. It can’t do the forgiving. It can’t do the praying. It can’t do the hard conversation. It can’t do the daily obedience when nobody claps. It can’t do the slow re-training of our thoughts when anxiety comes back. It can’t do the choosing to trust God when our feelings argue with us.

Real change—real life, a better reality—usually requires active engagement. Not just with our goals, but with God and with our actual lives. It means we slow down long enough to reflect: What’s been forming me? What patterns kept repeating this year? Where did I hide, blame, numb out, or control? Where did I love well? Where did I stop trusting?

And then, with God’s help, we evaluate and adjust. Sometimes that means changing the way we think—what we assume about ourselves, about others, about God. Sometimes it means changing how we act—what we say yes to, what we avoid, how we spend our time. Sometimes it means changing how we relate—telling the truth, asking forgiveness, setting a boundary, choosing patience. Sometimes it means changing what we believe in practice—moving from “God is good” as a slogan to “God is trustworthy” as a decision. And sometimes it means learning to love again, not in theory, but in the daily grind.

So yes, we can welcome a new year. But we don’t worship the idea of “new.” We worship Christ, who makes people new.

And He usually does it the same way: not by magic, not by abstract dreaming, but by grace that meets us—and a faith that actually steps forward.