25 Thoughtful New Year Prayers for The Year Ahead
As 2023 comes to a close, it’s a great opportunity to reflect on the year’s graces — what God set in your path, what triumphs you overcame, what friendships you grew, what goals you exceeded, and so much more. Ending the year with a grateful heart is a fantastic way to enter a new year of life. To help you with that transition, we’ve put together a list of New Year blessings to share with friends and family, meditate on, incorporate into your daily prayers, or write down in your journal as intentions for 2024.
Ranging from short New Year prayers to longer religious blessings, there’s some nugget of wisdom for everyone to take into the new year. Use these as New Year’s Instagram captions, write them in a New Year’s card, or bookmark them for yourself to look at throughout the start of the new year.
With an array of unknowns and possibilities ahead, these New Year prayers and blessings can help guide you through the highs and lows of the coming months, emerging with thankfulness and trust in God’s plan.
For more inspiring New Year content, check out our articles on Bible verses for the New Year, New Year quotes, and lucky New Year’s colors. Happy 2024!
Short New Year Blessings
New Year Blessing to All
"May the new year bring everything you wished for and more."
New Year Blessing for Friends
"Here’s to a new year with the same great people!"
New Year Blessing Toast
"Cheers to a new year and a fresh start!"
Traditional New Year Blessing
"Let us start anew, and focus on a year full of friendships, love, and family."
New Year Blessing for 2024
"For 2024, I wish you all the love and abundance the world has in store for you."
New Year Blessing of Faith
"Thank God for another year of blessings and light."
Happy New Year Blessing
"Wishing you gratitude for years past, joy in the present, and hope for the future."
New Year Prayers
A Prayer to Prepare for the Year Ahead
"Dear God,
Thank you for new beginnings. What an incredible day this is with a fresh year's potential stretched out before me. I want to be found faithful this year in each and every opportunity you bring to me. Thank you, Lord, for new beginnings. I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen."
— Pastor David McGee
For a Strong Relationship With God
"Lord Jesus,
I thank you that you are with me, that you are in me. Resolutions might come in one year and go out the other. Open my ears this year, so that I can hear you and enjoy you at every junction, when you tell me to turn right or left. Amen."
— Pete Briscoe, Experiencing Life Today
A Prayer for Strength When Starting Over
"Dear God,
Give me the courage to begin again — to overlook the difficulties, to overcome the obstacles, and to stay open to the moment as best I can. Help me be patient enough to know it takes time to start over and wise enough to ask for help from friends and family when I need it. As I look to the future, may I reflect on the past and remember the lessons it’s taught me. And God, may I always look to you for strength and guidance."
For Thankfulness
"God of Love,
You are with us in every transition and change.
As we enter into this new era with excitement and even some anxiety, we recall your deep compassion, presence, and abounding love.
We thank you for the gifts, talents, and skills with which you have blessed us.
We thank you for the experiences that have brought us to this moment.
We thank you for the work of others that gives breadth and depth to our own work.
Be with us as we move forward, rejoicing with you and supporting one another.
We ask this in your holy name."
— Joseph P. Shadle
RELATED: Bible Verses About Thankfulness and Gratitude
A Prayer for Letting Go of the Past
"Dear God,
On this day, I ask you to grant this request?
May I know who I am and what I am, every moment of every day.
May I be a catalyst for light and love, and bring inspiration to those whose eyes I meet.
May I have the strength to stand tall in the face of conflict, and the courage to speak my voice, even when I'm scared.
May I have the humility to follow my heart, and the passion to live my soul's desires.
May I seek to know the highest truth, and dismiss the gravitational pull of my lower self.
May I embrace and love the totality of myself? My darkness as well as my light.
May I be brave enough to hear my heart? To let it soften so that I may gracefully choose faith over fear.
Today is my day to surrender anything that stands between the sacredness of my humanity and my divinity.
May I be drenched in my holiness and engulfed by your love.
May all else melt away.
And so it is."
— Debbie Ford
God Is Always by Your Side
"Lord,
Whether we’re leaving behind a year of joy and blessing or trials and difficulties, we pause to give thanks. We thank you that you are always with us, every single day of every single year. Please remind us of your presence in the year ahead, even when life is busy. We are so thankful that we serve a God who makes things new and gives us the grace of fresh starts and new beginnings. Be glorified in our lives this year. In Jesus’ name, Amen."
A Prayer for Gratitude
"As the dawn breaks on a new year, let us give thanks for all we hold dear: our health, our family, and our friends.
Let us release our grudges, our anger, and our pains, for these are nothing but binding chains. Let us live each day in the most loving ways, the God-conscious way. Let us serve all who are in need, regardless of race, color, or creed.
Let us keep God, of our own understanding, in our hearts and to chant God's name each day. Let us lead the world from darkness to light, from falsehood to truth, and from wrong to right.
Let us remember that we are all one, embracing all, discriminating against none.
May your year be filled with peace, prosperity, and love. May God's blessings shower upon you and bestow upon each of you a bright, healthy, and peaceful new year."
— Rev. Marcy Sheremetta
For Trust in God's Plan
"Heavenly Father,
At midnight,
when the old year dies,
and the new comes bounding in,
I draw strength from knowing
that in the next twelve months
the snows will go,
the buds will burst,
the heat will rise,
the leaves will fly.
That all these things will happen
according to your schedule
and in your time;
That there is order in your universe,
and that I am part of it."
— Van Varner
A Prayer for Love
"O God of steadfast love, trusting you, we devote our hearts to learning and our lives to walking.
Teach us truth, that we may walk with courage.
Teach us mercy, that we may walk with humility.
Teach us forgiveness, that we may walk with compassion.
Teach us grace, that we may walk with strength.
Teach us wonder, that we may walk with praise.
Teach us goodness, that we may walk with those in need.
O God of steadfast love, learning from you, may we walk well. Amen."
— J. Bradley Wigger, Together We Pray
A Short New Year's Prayer
"Eternal God, you gave us the greatest gift: the gift of life.
In the coming year, help us use it wisely.
May we grow in generosity, kindness and forgiveness, hope, faith, and love.
Amen."
For a Peaceful New Year
"God of all time, help us enter the New Year quietly, thoughtful of who we are to ourselves and to others, mindful that our steps make an impact and our words carry power.
May we walk gently.
May we speak only after we have listened well.
Creator of all life, help us enter the New Year reverently, aware that you have endowed every creature and plant, every person and habitat, with beauty and purpose.
May we regard the world with tenderness.
May we honor rather than destroy.
Lover of all souls, help us enter the New Year joyfully, willing to laugh and dance and dream, remembering our many gifts with thanks and looking forward to blessings yet to come.
May we welcome your lavish love.
May we cast off the small, vindictive gods our fears have made.
May the grace and peace of Christ bless you now and in the days ahead."
RELATED: Prayers for Peace
A New Year's Prayer for Trust
"Father, I abandon myself into your hands. Do with me what you will. Whatever you may do, I thank you. I am ready for all, I accept all. Let only your will be done in me and in all your creatures. I wish no more than this, O Lord. Into your hands, I commend my soul. I offer it to you with all the love of my heart. For I love you, Lord, and so need to give myself, to surrender myself, into your hands without reserve and with boundless confidence, for you are my Father."
— Charles de Foucauld
A Prayer for Welcoming the Future
"Lord,
I fight against change so often, settle into what’s comfortable and what’s known, but I know you are doing something new.
Thank you that even when everything changes around me, you always remain the same —faithful, true, trustworthy, and full of grace.
Please help me to know where to go and what to do.
Show me when to say goodbye to the old and how to welcome new seasons and opportunities.
Please remind me of your presence, and help me be strong and courageous, knowing that you are with me.
In Jesus’ name, Amen"
Religious New Year Blessings
A Prayer for New Beginnings
"Consult not your fears, but your hopes and your dreams. Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential. Concern not yourself with what you tried and failed in, but what it is still possible for you to do."
— Pope John XXIII
A Christian New Year's Blessing
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because the Lord has anointed me. He has sent me to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to liberate the oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor."
— Luke 4:18-19
A Prayer for Happiness
"May the Lord make my New Year a happy one...
Not by shielding me from sorrow and pain but by strengthening me to bear it if it comes.
Not by making my path easy but by making me sturdy enough to tread any path.
Not by taking hardship from me but by taking all cowardice and fear from my heart, as I meet hardships.
Not by granting me unbroken sunshine but by keeping my face bright even in the shadows.
Not by making my life always pleasant but by showing me where men and His cause need me most and by making me zealous to be there and to help...
God, make my year a happy one."
— Guideposts Magazine, (January 1973)
New Year's Blessing From the Bible
"You crown the year with your goodness; your paths overflow with rich food."
— Psalm 65:11
A Prayer for Restoring Your Relationship With God
"I believe that I enter a glorious new year to be filled with prayer and praise, with service to God and mankind, with inspired creative activity.
I believe that God’s presence goes with me wherever I shall go this year, by train or Ires or car or boat, slowly paced on foot, or high in air.
I believe His love is shining in my body. His wisdom guides my mind. His peace fills me with poise. His strength is ever at my call.
Oh, I believe that this is God’s new year."
— Elizabeth Searle Lamb
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