St. Peter's Lutheran Church

PASTOR’S MESSAGE - January 2025

Happy New Year, 2025

Grace and peace to you in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It is in Him that we live, move, and have our being. I pray you are experiencing the joy of being both His creation and His child.

In ancient Roman religion and Greek mythology, they recognized a mythical god named Janus. Janus was the god of beginnings and transitions. He represented the facilitation of gates, doorways, passages, and endings. Janus presided over the beginning and ending of conflicts. Janus was depicted as a god with two faces on one head; and these two faces looked in the opposite direction of each other. Their direction indicated that one face looked backward as the other looked forward. It is conventionally thought that Janus is the root from where we get the word January, the name for the first month of the year.

Now we are not polytheistic; we do not consent to the belief in many gods. So, for us, the history of this mythical Janus only serves to shed some historical and cultural light on the terminology and application for the month of January.

New Years is the ideal time to look back and reflect on God’s work and Providence in our lives in 2024. However, it is also a time to look ahead and set a course for 2025 that leads to an expected end. It is a time to commence some things; but it is also a time to conclude some things.

My prayer for you in 2025 encompasses the following:
I pray that as God is beginning some things, you will walk in His strength to end some things. As you press towards the mark, you should also forget those things which are behind. Make a conscious choice to end those things (within your control) that distract and deter you from God’s plan for your life.

I pray that 2025 will be a year for ‘next level preparation’. You may be carrying within you a gift, ability, vocation, or aspiration that you believe will catapult your life forward. If that is you, you need not worry about how God will manifest that which is within you. Focus, however, on pushing yourself intently to a greater level of preparation that is comparable to your level of expectation. If you do things the same way, you will get the same results. However, if you prepare on another level, you’ll produce different results.

I pray that 2025 will be a year for increasing discipleship. Make a personal commitment to God to magnify your walk with God through a greater commitment to Christian service, personal witness and stewardship.

I celebrate God’s provision over your life and family during 2024, but I am also excited about God’s will being manifested in your lives in 2025. With all that is going on in the world today, what a refreshing word it is to know that your life is in God’s control and it will flourish and be sustained by God’s authority.

May the Lord do exceedingly abundantly above all that we can ask or think in 2025.  As we raise our commitment to Him both individually and corporately as members of St. Peter’s.

Happy New Year from my family to yours.

Rev. Perucy N. Butiku 
Coverage Pastor