With Christmas now behind us, it’s time to look ahead to the New Year.  There is something hopeful and exciting about the start of the New Year, isn’t there?  It’s a time to look back and reflect on the year that was, for sure, but it is also a time to look ahead, to set new goals, hopeful and good goals for the New Year.  I am already mentally preparing for what the gym will look like here in January.  This is a fun and hopeful time of year, with lots of traditions and festivities, and that one last holiday before we jump back into life!  My favorite traditions are going to bed early, assuming the ball will still drop without me making sure it drops in New York City, and eating my Pork and Sauerkraut on New Year’s Day.  Here at MRC, we hope you enjoy your traditions and this last holiday of the year with your family and friends, but we also hope you set aside some time to think, get intentional, and set some good, healthy goals too!  Solomon told us this was a good idea, and he was a pretty smart guy!

Proverbs 17:24 An intelligent person aims at wise action, but a fool starts off in many directions. GNT

We can all make jokes about those resolutions that fade away by February, but they don’t have to!  Set your goals, take aim, and go get them!  This can absolutely be the year that you lose the weight and get healthy!  This can be the year that you stop wasting time on social media and comparing your life with everyone else’s!  This can be the year you stop drinking and escaping and truly engage life!  This can absolutely be the year you prioritize time with God and experience that life-giving relationship with Him!  This can be the year, so take aim at wise action, set those resolutions, and don’t joke about when you will quit them!  This absolutely can be the year!  You can do it.

You know, whatever the personal goals and resolutions you set this year, I do think, as Christians and as people who have loved ones and those around us, we care about, deep down, there is something we all want.  Deep down, we all want to make an impact in life.  We want our lives to matter. We want to make a difference and influence our families, our workplaces, our communities, and even the world.  And as I prepared this message to welcome us into the new year, that is what I want to talk to you about today: How we can maximize our impact in 2026 and beyond.   Now, here is what can be very interesting: what I just said can really hit us in different ways.  Some people heard that we are going to learn how to maximize our impact and get excited.  Some people heard that and took a deep breath, thinking, " Great, another motivational talk giving me more things to do, and probably not accomplish.”  So how does that statement make you feel?  Excited?  Tired?  Are you mentally scrolling through your schedule, and all you have to do, and how busy your life is, and already establishing why you can’t do it?  It’s funny because when you and I think about making an impact, our minds will go to a list that looks something like this…“I’m going to need to work harder, move faster, do more, try better, fix what is broken, push through a lot, and carry more weight than I already am.”

But here is the truth. That is how we humans think it should go; God’s way of impacting this world is the complete opposite.  And I would add to that, if we want to make a real impact in 2026 and beyond, we are going to have to unlearn some things, so we can learn and accept God’s way of doing things. 

We just spent the last few weeks of the relationship series diving into this concept as we studied the Parable of the Mustard Seed. 

Matthew 13:31 He told them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. 32 Though it is the smallest of all your seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches." NIV

Jesus says the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed: it’s small, looks pretty insignificant, appears weak, and takes a long time to grow slowly into a tree. Everything about it looks and feels pretty underwhelming in its process of becoming something great, but Jesus says this is what God’s kingdom is like.  This is challenging because we want instant results, we want to see our wins and successes, we want to know and feel our impact on the world and people around us. But God chooses faithfulness, depth, and character over fast success, appearances, and speed. He wants our obedience; we want people to cheer us on.  It’s interesting because so many of us question whether we can or are making a difference; we can feel small, overlooked at times, or maybe like we are not “doing enough,” but that may actually mean we are in the spot God wants us to be.  I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t want big, fast success that makes it easy to tell we are winning or doing God’s will in life, but so often, impact doesn’t start loud and big; it starts with faithfulness, trust, and obedience.

I’m just going to say this: accepting that concept isn’t easy, and the more you care about what you are doing or who you are trying to impact, the harder this is to accept.  But you know, if we don’t accept this, we fight against it.  We just can’t force things to happen, and the harder we try, the worse things get.  I will give you an example from my own life.  I have four children, and they are all leaving childhood and entering adulthood. I am also very passionate about my faith and want them to experience health and the full and abundant life that Jesus came to provide.  I care deeply for them, and can feel fear, stress, and anxiety as they make life choices that scare and even sometimes hurt me.  I want to be a good witness and reflect God and His love to them well, but the harder I tried, the worse things were getting.  I was giving good advice, doing everything I could to help them find health and God, desperately wanting them to learn from my hurts and my pain, and so they wouldn’t have to experience even half of what I did, but the harder I was trying, the worse it seemed to be going.  In all my efforts to support, help, lead, and be a good witness, it seemed to be going the opposite of how I wanted it to be, which hurt me, stressed me out, and tired me out.  Now think about that, who would look at someone who is tired, stressed out, grumpy, and just miserable and think, “Wow, look at that frustrated, grumpy, tired, stressed out person, I want what they have in my life too!”  I love them so much, and couldn’t get anywhere, and the harder I tried, the worse it was getting.  Then one morning, I was praying for them, letting God know how frustrated I was, and asking why my witness wasn’t where I’d like it to be.  Feeling hopeless like I’m not making a dent in the people that matter most to me, and I was looking at pictures of my family on my phone, and I felt like God touched my heart as I looked at my beautiful family. This prayer just kind of came out of me, “Lord, if I want to have an impact, I have to stop trying to have an impact and simply allow you to impact me.”  Wow, was that a moment for me, and I still don’t get it right all the time, but it was a big shift for me in my life, because that idea applies to every aspect of my life.  

It's interesting, we can try so hard to help people, and the more we care, the more urgent it feels, but the reality is we can’t change people.  Change doesn’t come from pressure, and it won’t come because you deeply want something for them; it comes through love, a love that clearly comes from God, a love that allows us to simply be with people right where they are, not where we hope they can or will be.  We aren’t pushing them or changing them; it's a love that lets us be with them and allows their lives to unfold.  Loving this way will only happen if we allow God to shape and impact us.  God’s love must shape us before it can flow through us and be seen by the people we hope to help in this world.  That is the point: if you want to make an impact in 2026 and beyond, stop trying to make an impact and allow God to impact you!

So, do you want to be a good witness?  Do you want to maximize your impact in 2026 and beyond?  Here’s the reality of the situation, and the key to living your best life.  YOU CAN’T. GOD CAN.  BUT YOU HAVE TO LET HIM.  The question of the day becomes, Will you let Him?  Listen, I really want to free you up today.  You can’t change hearts. You can’t make choices for people. You can’t fix people. You can’t carry everything or be everything to everyone around you.  But God can.  Remember what Jesus told us in John 15?

John 15:4 “Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. 5 "I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” NIV

This is so important: Jesus didn’t say that, apart from Him, we can get some stuff done.  He said that if we are apart from Him, we can do nothing, but if we stay connected to Him, we can bear much fruit, which, by my math, “much” is a lot more than none. So, as we look at maximizing our impact in the new year, the question is not “How hard will I try, or how much will I do, or how fast can I get this done?”  The question becomes this: Will I let God do what only God can do…or not? 

How do we maximize our impact in 2026 and beyond?  We embrace this truth.  We can’t.  God can, and we need to let Him.  So, how are you doing with this?  You might be thinking, “That is not where I thought Sam would take this talk today!”  This is the key to maximizing your impact; it’s found in giving up your wants and desires…surrendering all of that to God and trusting Him to do what only He can do in your life.  And with the time we have left, I’d like us to look at a few ways we can allow God to impact us, so we can impact others.

First, we have to slow down.  If you are having a hard time with the mustard seed principle, or even with Jesus saying, "Attach to the vine to produce much fruit," there is a reason for that.  It’s because it looks so different than how we think, and way different from the mindset our culture pushes on us.  One big lie that we can accept from our culture is that busyness equals more impact, but Scripture tells us the opposite. While I could give you many examples, let's look here in Psalm 46.

Psalm 46:10 "Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth." NIV

Be still and know that I am God.  We are to cease striving and just let God be God. This is challenging for us as people.  It is unsettling to be still, because we aren’t getting anywhere in the moment, but stillness is not wasted time; it’s essential.  When we slow down and get still, we can hear God more clearly and see ourselves and others as we should.  When we are still, we stop performing, working, and striving, which allows us to settle our hearts, minds, and souls.  Your impact will not come from doing more and moving faster; it will flow out of your relationship with God, which can’t happen if you are always moving, busy, and distracted.  So, maybe as we look to the New Year, some of the most important goals we could set would look very different from those in years past.  Maybe this year we look to be intentional about times of rest, times in prayer and Scripture, times of saying no to things we used to say yes to, and times of simply being still, and trusting God to do what only He can do in our lives.  I’m not sure those made the top 5 ways we thought we would be maximizing our impact next year, but try to picture what a life lived this way could be like!

Second, after slowing down, we stop carrying extra weight in our lives.  You know, life is hard, and I often say we tend to live in ways that make a hard life harder.  One of the big ways we do this is by carrying weight that just isn’t ours to carry.  Life is heavy enough without adding to it, and many of us are exhausted because we carry so much that just isn’t ours to carry, and I will say it again, the more we care about something or someone, the more likely we are to load weight on ourselves that just isn’t ours to carry.  We can’t make choices for people; we can’t fix things for people that they don’t want to fix; we can’t want more for people than they want for themselves. And so often we are burdened by this, but it isn’t ours to carry.  We can’t.  God can, and we need to let Him.  Our job is to love people and reflect Jesus to those around us; His job is to do what we can’t.  So often, when we try to do God’s job rather than sticking with our own, we feel exhausted, stressed out, and weighed down by things we shouldn’t be carrying.  Two places in Scripture come to mind: first, is Jesus explaining the weight of His teaching…

Matthew 11:28 "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." NIV

So often, we aren’t slowing down enough to recognize that much of the weight that is crushing us isn’t ours to carry.  As we come to Jesus, we give Him our burdens, and He gives us His rest, real rest for our souls, because His way is easy and light.  The second scripture is found in Hebrews.

Hebrews 12:1 “…let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. 2 We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith…” NLT

I think for a lot of us, we think of the weight that slows us down as sin in our lives. But if you notice, the writer didn’t say it was the only weight we carry; he said it was a big part of it, “especially the sin that so easily trips us up.”  We definitely want to get rid of sin, but also expectations, guilt, comparisons, fear, old hurts and wounds, old identities, unnecessary stress and pressures, and even the choices and challenges the people around us face, or the blame they may try to put on us as to why their lives look the way they do.  We can’t hold and carry that stuff; life is hard and heavy enough without adding to it.  We fix our eyes on Jesus, which allows us to let go and let God do what only He can do in our lives.  We can’t.  He can.  But we have to let Him.

The last area I want us to focus on, if we are going to maximize our impact in 2026, is our minds.  We have to be focused and intentional to renew our thinking.  Why?  Well, the human brain can have up to 60,000 thoughts a day, and studies show that up to 40,000 of those thoughts can be negative.  And of those 40,000 negative thoughts you can have in a day, most will keep coming back on repeat, day after day.  So many of us get trapped in negative thinking.  I know that when you see me on Sundays, I tend to smile, but I can struggle with negative looping thoughts. I have affectionally named mine “My Hepner Loop” as I can go round and round in negative thinking.  This is something I have learned to work on, to be intentional with, and to do my best to replace those negative thoughts with God, with gratitude, prayer, and praise. I don’t always get it right.  I am thinking I’m not the only one who can struggle with negative thoughts.  Ever just without thinking, say to yourself, “I’m not enough.  I always fail. I’m such a loser or idiot. I’ll never change. I’m a screw up…and on and on I could go.”  Paul does an amazing job of walking us through the importance of our thinking and the power our brains have over our lives.  He seemed to understand neurology long before it was ever taught or studied!  Here in Romans, we see how powerful our thoughts are and the impact they have on our lives!

Romans 12:2 Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God's will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect. NLT

And there are many places where Paul helps us see how intentional and focused we must be, we take our thoughts captive, and replace them. 

2 Corinthians 10:5 We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. NIV

Philippians 4:8 And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.  NLT

Not only do we see how deliberate we must be with our thoughts, but we also see in Philippians that we need to focus on the right things, too!  We don’t just pay attention to our thoughts; we don’t just hold them captive or fix our minds on them. We replace those negative thoughts with God, with prayer, praise, and what is good.  The concept of letting God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think is so important because it really shapes your self-view and identity.  When you replace your negative thinking with God, you begin to see your true identity: that you are chosen, set apart, and dearly loved by God.   In so many ways, your impact and witness, how you relate to people, flows out of your identity.  When you know who you are in Christ, everything changes. You can slow down, you don’t have to try so hard, you can stop carrying extra weight that isn’t yours to carry, and you are renewing your mind in Christ. As that happens, people around you see it and feel it; your impact grows.

So here we are, getting ready to welcome in a New Year, and today I wanted to show you how to make the greatest possible impact on your people and this world in 2026 and beyond.  This is a life-changing invitation for you and those around you.  But this invitation is not for you to do more; it is not to move faster or to fill your schedule with more stuff to do; it is not an invitation to try harder or to fix everything and everyone around you.  It’s actually the opposite.  The way to truly make the most of your life and witness is to slow down and allow God to impact you.  Heading into the New Year, you will see all kinds of tips and techniques to help you become a new you.  You can even find many tips and techniques on how to maximize your life and impact in this world, most of this will lead you to programs, things to do, and it will all look good and make you feel like it will get you where you need to go, but for the most part, all that stuff will completely contradict what God’s Word tells us will actually change our lives and the lives of those around us.  The way to the greatest impact you can have in 2026 is not something you can manufacture; it is something you allow to take place in your life. 

So, as we close, and this new year begins, I just want you to process this today.  Will you slow down and place God first?  Will you let go of all the extra weight you shouldn’t be carrying in your life? Will you finally understand your true identity, that you are chosen, set apart, and dearly loved?  Will you stop looping in negative thoughts and replace them with God?  Can you stop striving and trust God’s process?

I think, deep down, everyone wants to make an impact, and a new year is a great time to set new goals. But this year, I just wanted you to understand that the only way to make a true impact in this world is to stop trying to make an impact and allow God to impact you. 

Do you want to maximize your impact in 2026 and beyond?  You can’t.  God can.  But you have to let Him.