The year has only just begun, and already the pull towards becoming something new or different this year is in the air. Clean calendars have a way of stirring expectations, both spoken and unspoken. Before we rush toward goals, habits or plans, it is worth slowing down long enough to ask a more foundational question: Who am I becoming as I walk into this year?

Scripture consistently begins with being before doing.

Before Israel is given commandments, they are called God’s people.
Before the disciples are sent out, they are invited to be with Jesus.

“Remain in me, and I will remain in you,” Jesus says, placing presence at the very center of our spiritual life (John 15:4). Being is not passive or unproductive. It is formative. It is the place where God shapes the heart before directing the hands.

So much of our exhaustion comes not from doing too much, but from doing without abiding. We move quickly, afraid that stillness might mean stagnation. We forget that stillness in the presence of God is never empty. It is attentive. It is receptive. It is the slow, sacred work of becoming aware that we are already held.

Dallas Willard often reminded the church that God is far more interested in forming people rather than managing behavior. Transformation does not begin with effort or intention but with presence. When we skip being and move straight into doing, even good intentions eventually grow heavy. At the beginning of a new year, the pressure to prove our devotion can quietly replace the invitation to simply remain.

To be with God is to allow ourselves to be seen without performing, known without producing and loved without earning. This kind of presence gently exposes the false selves we’ve been carrying and invites us to lay them down. It is uncomfortable at first, but it is also deeply healing.

This is where we MAKE ROOM not to perform but to stay. To sit with God without an agenda, to pray without polish and to read Scripture simply to know God without rushing toward application.

Before there is anything to accomplish this year, God is inviting us simply to be with Him.
And that is enough to begin, because He is the treasure. He is the prize.