The Jeff Cavins Show (Your Catholic Bible Study Podcast) - A Healthy Year in Review

Episode Date: January 2, 2026

What did God do in your life in 2025? Before rushing into the new year, Jeff encourages us to pause and remember the significant moments when God worked in our lives over the past year. Email us with comments or questions at [e-mail]. Text “jeffcavins” to 33-777 to subscribe and get Jeff’s shownotes delivered straight to your email! Or visit https://media.ascensionpress.com/?s=&page=2&category%5B0%5D=Ascension%20Podcasts&category%5B1%5D=The%20Jeff%20Cavins%20Show for full shownotes!

This podcast is brought to you by Ascension. To discover even more free Catholic podcasts, videos, and resources, to help you live your faith every day, visit ascensionpress.com. Welcome to the Jeff Kaven Show, where we talk about the Bible, discipleship, and evangelization, putting it all together in living as activated disciples. This is show 463, a healthy year in review. Well, there we go. One year over with 2025 and now we are entering now this new year of 2006 and happy new year to you. On behalf of my family and the family at Ascension, happy new year to you and pray that this coming year will be not just a happy year. That's really not the goal, I don't think, but a fruitful year.

Not even a productive year, but mainly a fruitful year for you in 2006. If you want the scriptures I'm going to be mentioning today, all you've got to do is text my name, Jeff Kaven's one word to the number 3-3-7-7. We'll get on board with you and give you those scriptures for today. A couple things I want to talk about today. It's going to be a little shorter than normal. I know life is busy right now, but I think there's a couple things that I want to remind you of as you now go into 2006. You know, as you look throughout the Old Testament, you will see that God moved in Israel's life in a very powerful way. And one of the things that the Lord continually emphasizes is remembering, looking back, remembering what he did for you.

And oftentimes what they would do is they would set up some kind of memorial, whether it's stones or some kind of offering or sacrifice, it would be a reminder of what God had accomplished in their life. Now, you can either look at that as it's a cute thing to do, or you can look at it as a necessary thing, that God wants people to take a moment and remember what he did. You know, Elie Wiesel, when he wrote that book called Night about the Holocaust, He mentions this point, and that is that if we don't remember, then we will repeat history and the mistakes that we make.

We must remember. And that's why the Jewish community is every year they have a day where they remember the Holocaust so that we don't forget. Some people would say, well, don't you want to forget? Well, in the sense of a horrific happening, yeah, you'd want to forget that and not live with that, but you cannot forget it. or you'll repeat it. And that's what I want to share with you today. Just two little truths. The first one is this. Take some time this week and look back at 2025. Don't just move on to 2006. But take some time and look back on your life in 2025 and ask yourself, what are three things that the Lord did in my life this year that were substantial? That changed my way of thinking. It changed my behavior. It had an impact on our family, our worldview, whatever it might be, our parish. But what did God do in your life? Now, in the book of Joshua, Joshua chapter 4, verses 6 and 7, it says, in the future, when your children ask you, what do these stones mean?

Because they piled up stones in the Jordan River. He says, tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever. And so there was a memorial established there with stones to remind future generations of what God did in Israel's life. Now, I'm not suggesting that you mount up stones all over your backyard or anything like that, unless you want to. But I do think it's important to have some kind of memorial of what God does in our life from year to year. You know, we've done this with our Christmas decorations, where we have an ornament every year

that says something about what God did in our life that year. And so we've been married 48 years, and so at Christmas time, it takes a little bit longer now to actually go through all of those since 1978 and to tell our children and our grandchildren what God has done in our lives. I have one relative that cut off the lower inch of their Christmas tree every year, and they strung them together, and I think they were married 68 years, almost 70 years, and they every year would bring out all of these strung together slices of Christmas trees and tell the story of their family. Genesis 28, early the next morning, Jacob took the stone he had placed under his head and set it up as a pillar and poured oil on it. He called that place Bethel. Now, there's a number of other things from scripture here.

Psalm 77, 11 through 12. And I'm going to actually give you in the show notes quite a few more scriptures that I'm not covering right now, but I'll just put those in there for you. But Psalm 77 says, I will remember the deeds of the Lord. Yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago. I will consider all your works and meditate on all your mighty deeds. That's great wisdom right there.

And you know, David did that when he took on Goliath. What did he do? He went back and gathered up all the memories of how God was faithful in his life. And he concluded in front of Goliath, you're not going to be any different than the bear and the lion. You're just one more. And God is God. And he will take care of me.

And so David, in a sense, goes back and gathers the past, brings it up into the present and bolsters his strategy and his fight with Goliath. And of course, we know that he won, right? Psalm 103.2, praise the Lord my soul and forget not all his benefits. Deuteronomy 8-2, remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these 40 years. The humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. A couple more here. Deuteronomy 32-7, remember the days of old, consider the generations long past. Ask your father, and he will tell you your elder. and they will explain to you.

So I'm going to put in a bunch more here. I think I'm going to put in, what do I have for you here? I've got about, I don't know, 17, 18, 19 of them that I'm going to put it in the notes just as reminders to do this. But I want you just to remember to take the time and think about last year, isolate what God has done in your life, give thanks to him, and put it in that file of we're going to continue to live this way. we're going to continue to walk this way.

I've learned something from 2025. Don't let go of the revelations that God has given you. You know, I used to be a pastor before I came back to the Catholic Church. You probably know that. But wow, you know, I emphasize this a lot. And that was that when you have a revelation of God, he opens up scripture, opens up his teaching to you in such a personal way, don't just move on.

Literally memorialize it. Don't forget it. live that, the rest of your life. Now, the second thing I want to share with you real briefly is this. This last year, I emphasized twice in podcasts, this whole quandary we get into with priorities plural. And I want to reiterate that to you. I'm going to be showing up at Sikh 26 in Columbus in just a couple days. And I'm going to talk about this a little bit with focused missionaries and young people gathering from around the country. But this, we complicate our lives. And going into 2026, you don't want to do that. How do you do it? You do it by

establishing five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten priorities. Now, that will absolutely goof you up. And I know that from personal experience. I used to teach time management for something called the Franklin time system when I was a pastor, trying to get people to organize their life. And back there, then they would tell you to come up with priorities in your life, plural. But here's the problem with that, okay? The problem with that is that if you come up with a priority for your marriage, a priority for your finances, priority for your own spiritual life, priority for the kids, a priority for retirement, priority for health,

you come up with all these priorities. The problem is that if you have multiple priorities, by definition, you have no priority. because priority means really in the first place, that one thing is your priority. Now, Jesus didn't have priorities. He had one. And that was to do what the Father sent him to do and say. That was it, the high priestly prayer.

That's what Jesus did. Jesus didn't walk around with a time system with seven different priorities. Things that are important flow from the priority. And in this idea of priority, the word was really developed. the 14th century, I think it was a 14th century, but the idea of priorities plural only came about in the 20th century. C.S. Lewis talks about this, and he talks about how, by definition, if you have priorities plural, you don't have a priority. You just don't. And if you got seven to 10 priorities, good luck, good luck. And you know how hard that is. You're always trying to juggle them

and you feel like you're disintegrated. You feel like you're really not accomplishing anything of substance in any particular area. One priority, that's all I have. Everything that's important in my life flows from that. My priority is to do and say exactly what Jesus wants me to. His will be done. That is my priority.

Say, well, I mean, your wife's not your priority. Your kids aren't your priority. Your grandkids are not your priority. No, they're not. They're important. But they flow from my priority. So I would encourage you this year, not only look back and see what God did in your life in 2025, but I would encourage you, my friend.

Establish your priority in 2006, not priorities. Don't do that again. You know it doesn't work. You know that it's deficient. You know that it's less than effective. What is your priority? And if you cannot come up with your priority, then throw the priorities out the window.

And I mean that. I really mean that. That can mean all the difference in 2006. Well, God bless you. I hope you do have a great year, fruitful year. I just wanted to share that with you and say, Happy New Year. God bless you.

Talk to you next week.