2026 is just a couple of days away, an important time for us to look ahead at what's to come.

Thank you for listening to the Desiring God Messages feed.

I pray that this feed of our latest sermons has blessed you this year.

This is Tony Rankie, host of Ask Pastor John.

Honored to spend a moment with you here as we hear from Pastor John.

The calendar changes in just a few days.

Looking ahead is important, but looking ahead requires energy, too.

Dreaming, planning, envisioning, enthusiasm for what's possible, and then the energy to actually do new things.

It's a lot, especially a desiring God, because we stand on a

legacy of 17,000 resources now, all of them totally free online. And we have that kind of history,

decades of God's blessing, the natural impulses to breathe the sigh of relief, to look back,

to admire the achievement,

and maybe get a little sentimental.

But here's the problem.

Dwelling on the past isn't a plan for what comes next.

It won't accomplish the important work still ahead of us.

So where does energy for the future come from? Here's Pastor John to answer that very

question. The older I get, the more relevant Philippians 313 becomes for me. Forgetting what

lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the

upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Now, I don't think that means you become less aware or less

thankful for decades of past ministry and past blessings. I think it means prioritize hope over nostalgia,

prioritize future purpose over past achievement. And for young people, that's just natural.

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