The God Diet

2 Corinthians 5:17 (NIV)

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. The old has gone, the new is here!

Happy New Year!

The new is here!

Tradition is to make a New Year’s Resolution and to keep it! On January 1, 2008, I made a New Year's resolution to never consume alcohol again. And today, I am celebrating 18 years of keeping that resolution! I think God is celebrating with me today!

God loves to celebrate our growth and achievements with us. We are important to Him. He loves us very, very much! We who confess Christ as our Savior and Lord are to emulate Him, to live as he lived, loving ALL our earthly neighbors as we love ourselves. But how can we love ourselves when we feel so inadequate, so unworthy? How can we love ourselves when we don’t even like ourselves sometimes?

The first step in loving ourselves is to see ourselves as God sees us, as human beings created in the image of God; the image of LOVE! We are a new creation in Christ. If we aren’t living in LOVE, if we don’t think we deserve love, we need to sit down and talk to God about that. God loves us! We need to learn to LOVE ourselves. He made us in his image.

If earthly hurts, habits, and hangups make us feel unlovable, then we have to make the necessary changes to grow in the likeness of Jesus. The eight recovery principles from Celebrate Recovery offer a tool to help us make the changes we need. These principles help us to overcome old Hurts, to break bad Habits, and to let go of our old Hangups. If you need some help with this work, visit a Celebrate Recovery meeting sometime, and you will find many people just like you, who are working daily on old hurts, bad habits, and hangups. The ones they need to let go.

Daily prayer, Bible reading, and quiet time with God are required to overcome those hurts, habits, and hangups. Make a New Year’s Resolution to begin a God Diet!

And here is a good schedule to use for your new 2026 God Diet…

1. Start your day with this podcast and read the Bible.

2. Spend some time in prayer before you jump on social media or go to school or work.

3. Pray and center yourself in God, asking for his help as you go through your day.

I can vouch for this schedule, because I’ve been using it for the last 18 years. Well, except for the podcast, which is only two years old and was added then. If we spend time with God each morning, before the world leads us into the fray, we will find it easier to turn to him as trouble, worries, or bad news find us. If we truly embrace Jesus Christ each morning, we will be amazed at how much the old habits, hurts, and hangups will fade away, and we move closer to God’s goodness.

As our verse for today says, “The old has gone,” and the new life centered in Christ is here!

Dear Lord Jesus...

I believe in you, and I need your help to keep my LOVE for God and my neighbors as the center of my life! Help me to share my life with You, by centering myself in Your LOVE each day. And help me to share that LOVE with my neighbors (all of them) every day! Thank you, Lord, AMEN.

This devotional was written and read by Bernice Howard.

Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.

If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [e-mail].

First United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to...