Learn of Christ · Updated
At a glance
A new year gives us a reason to examine our time, plans, and direction. These three readings supply a deeper examination than a list of hoped-for achievements. Psalm 90 asks God for wisdom and mercy within our brief lives. James challenges boasting about tomorrow while insisting on the good we already know to do. Paul describes pressing toward Christ while acknowledging that he has not already attained.
Three readings for a new beginning
The assigned readings are Psalm 90, James 4:13–17, and Philippians 3:7–16. Read one per session, using the full-chapter links to see the surrounding argument. You can use this plan at the start of a calendar year, after a significant change, or whenever you need to examine the direction of your days.
The readings do not announce what will happen to you over the next twelve months. They address what it means to live before God with limited time and knowledge. Their questions are concrete: What deserves your attention? What have you assumed about tomorrow? What good can you do now? What gives your effort its direction?
Keep three pages of notes, headed Time, Plans, and Direction. Write observations from the passages before making commitments. A commitment will be stronger if you can explain which words of Scripture shaped it. The purpose is thoughtful, responsive faith rather than a set of resolutions dressed in biblical language.
Session 1 — Psalm 90:1–2: our dwelling place across generations
Read alongside this section
The psalm begins with God as the dwelling place of his people through all generations. Before mountains and the world came into being, God is. The opening establishes a scale far larger than an individual lifespan or a calendar year. The people address the one whose life is not confined by their succession of beginnings and endings.
Read the communal pronouns. The prayer speaks of our dwelling place, our days, our sins, and the work of our hands. It can be prayed personally, but its concern reaches beyond an individual improvement plan. A new beginning occurs among other people whose lives and responsibilities are bound up with ours.
The image of dwelling also gives the prayer somewhere to stand. The psalm will name death, wrath, sorrow, and the brevity of human life. It begins by addressing God, so those hard realities are brought into a relationship rather than examined from a position that imagines humanity has no one to whom it can appeal.
Psalm 90:3–6: the scale of human life
The images move quickly: a thousand years compared with a past day or a watch in the night, lives carried away like a flood, sleep, and grass that flourishes in the morning and withers by evening. The comparisons make human transience visible. They do not provide a formula for converting every biblical time period into a secret calendar.
The prayer also names God’s agency. He turns human beings back, calls them to return, and carries them away. The psalm is not merely observing that life feels short. It places human life and its limits before the eternal God. A faithful reading should retain that theological weight.
For a new-year study, the point is sobering without requiring a prediction of death. We do not know how many days are ours. We can recognize that time is received and limited. That recognition can change the way we attend to an ordinary conversation, a task entrusted to us, or a relationship that we have assumed will always be available.
Psalm 90:12: the aim of numbering our days
The central request asks God to teach the people to number their days so that their hearts may be applied to wisdom. The goal is a wise heart. Counting is directed toward understanding and living, not simply toward increasing output or filling every hour.
That difference matters when the passage is applied to planning. A tightly organized schedule can still serve foolish ends. A less impressive day may contain patient care, necessary rest, truthful work, or reconciliation. Ask what makes the use of time wise before asking how much can fit into it.
The request is also a prayer for teaching. The people do not assume that awareness of mortality automatically produces wisdom. They ask to learn. You can approach the year with that same posture: prepared to examine habits, receive correction, and discover that a cherished goal deserves revision.
Study questions
What does Psalm 90:12 ask numbering our days to produce?
Compare your observations with the study notes
It asks for the heart to be applied to wisdom. The verse is not a command to maximize productivity or a promise to reveal the length of one’s life. Read it between the account of human limits and the petitions for mercy, gladness, and established work.
Psalm 90:13–17: what the people ask God to give
The prayer turns toward mercy, satisfaction, gladness, the manifestation of God’s work, and the establishment of human work. The people ask how long and appeal for God to return toward his servants. They do not deny the years of affliction. Their request for gladness is made with those years in view.
The closing petition repeats the request that God establish the work of their hands. Work remains meaningful within brief lives. The prayer does not respond to mortality by declaring every task pointless. It asks for human labor to receive enduring significance through God’s favor.
Keep the requests as requests. A reader can pray for useful, established work without announcing that every project will succeed this year. The passage offers language for dependence and hope. It does not give a forecast of promotions, income, recognition, or an uninterrupted season of ease.
Session 2 — James 4: hear the warning in its setting
Read alongside this section
The assigned verses come near the end of a chapter about desires, conflict, pride, humility, and the responsibility to do what God requires. Earlier verses challenge asking from wrong motives and call the hearers to draw near to God. The warning about tomorrow belongs within that examination of the heart.
James also addresses speaking against others and assuming the position of judge. Then he turns to people who speak confidently about going to a city, remaining for a year, trading, and making a profit. The subjects differ, but the challenge to self-assurance remains. Human beings are not in command of everything their words presume to settle.
Read verses 13–17 closely before applying them to your own plans. James names a particular kind of speech and then identifies its problem. That sequence helps avoid the conclusion that planning, travel, or commerce must be inherently wrong.
James 4:13–14: the year we assume we possess
The proposed plan includes a time, a destination, a duration, an activity, and an expected gain. It sounds orderly and complete. James interrupts with the fact that the speakers do not know what tomorrow will bring. Their own lives are like vapor, appearing briefly and then vanishing.
The problem is the confidence with which uncertain things are treated as settled. The plan assumes continued life, access to the city, time for trade, and a profitable result. James forces attention to a condition beneath the whole proposal: the planners are dependent creatures whose tomorrow is unknown.
For your own review, separate an intention from a prediction. “I intend to spend regular time with this responsibility” is different from “This year will certainly produce the result I want.” Making that distinction does not weaken responsible action. It makes the words more truthful and leaves room for events that require adjustment.
James 4:15–16: dependence reaches both living and doing
James says that the speakers ought to acknowledge the Lord’s will concerning both their life and their activity. The condition applies before the project even begins: if the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that. The correction reaches deeper than adding a religious phrase to an otherwise unchanged boast.
The next verse identifies rejoicing in boastings as evil. The chapter is confronting a posture that celebrates imagined control. A humble planner can still prepare, keep commitments, and act diligently. Humility concerns the way those actions are held before God and the honesty with which their limits are acknowledged.
Consider how you respond when circumstances interrupt your plans. Disappointment may be understandable. The deeper question is whether you have made the desired outcome a right you believe God owes you. James gives a way to reconsider that assumption without requiring you to pretend that changed plans carry no cost.
Study questions
Why is “if the Lord will” more than a polite phrase attached to a forecast?
Compare your observations with the study notes
James places both continued life and the proposed activity under the condition. His next sentence condemns boasting. The issue is an acknowledgment of real dependence, not a wording trick that makes every confident claim acceptable.
James 4:17: uncertainty does not cancel responsibility
The passage ends with the person who knows to do good and fails to do it. James does not let limited knowledge of tomorrow become an excuse for neglect today. A person may be unable to predict the year and still know a good action that should be taken now.
This is a useful corrective to two different habits. One is boasting about outcomes as though they are guaranteed. The other is waiting for complete certainty before doing anything. The closing verse directs attention to known responsibility within uncertain circumstances.
Make the application specific and proportionate. Perhaps you need to keep a promise, speak truthfully, correct an error, or offer appropriate help. The verse does not require you to solve every problem or accept every demand placed upon you. Ask what good you actually know to do, then identify a faithful next step.
Study questions
How does verse 17 prevent the warning about tomorrow from becoming passive resignation?
Compare your observations with the study notes
It identifies failure to do known good as sin. The uncertainty of future events does not remove present moral responsibility. The passage therefore supports humble planning joined to action, without pretending that either gives control over the outcome.
Session 3 — Philippians 3:7–9: what counts as gain?
Read alongside this section
Paul’s reflection follows a list of credentials and grounds on which he might claim confidence. He then describes a changed reckoning: what he counted gain he now counts loss for Christ, because knowing Christ Jesus his Lord surpasses those grounds of confidence. Read the movement from the earlier list into the assigned passage.
The passage should not be used to demean Jewish people or treat Paul’s ancestry as something intrinsically contemptible. Paul names his own history while describing where his confidence and righteousness are now located. The decisive center is being found in Christ and receiving righteousness from God by faith.
A new-year application can begin with the measure by which you call a year successful. Some achievements are worthwhile, yet none should become a substitute for the relation to Christ Paul describes. Ask what your chosen measures reward. Do they make room for faithfulness, love, repentance, and endurance, or only for results others can easily applaud?
Philippians 3:10–11: resurrection hope and fellowship in suffering
Paul’s desire to know Christ includes the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death. These belong together in the sentence. A reading that keeps only the language of power while leaving out suffering would change the direction of the passage.
The hope is also larger than a successful year. Paul looks toward resurrection. Later in the chapter he speaks of the Savior transforming the body to be like his glorious body. Christian hope here does not despise bodily life or reduce salvation to an improved state of mind.
Be careful with application to suffering. Paul’s willingness to share in Christ’s sufferings is not permission for someone else to impose harm or call abuse a spiritual assignment. The passage describes Paul’s pursuit of Christ. It invites readers to consider the whole shape of that pursuit without promising that faith will keep every difficult experience outside the coming year.
Philippians 3:12–16: effort that admits incompleteness
Paul explicitly says that he has not already attained or become perfect. He follows after, reaching toward what lies ahead. His effort is grounded in the fact that Christ has already apprehended him. The passage gives both initiative and response: Paul presses on because of his relation to Christ, while honestly acknowledging that he is not at the goal.
Forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward belongs to this account of pursuit. It does not require erasing memory, denying harm, or refusing to make amends. The imagery directs attention toward the calling in Christ rather than allowing the past to become the final measure of the journey.
Verses 15–16 then address the community’s mindset and walking according to what has already been attained. The passage does not celebrate isolated ambition. It calls for a shared orientation and consistent living. A useful practice is one that can be sustained in actual relationships, with encouragement and accountability rather than only private declarations.
Study questions
What holds together Paul’s confidence and his acknowledgment that he has not attained?
Compare your observations with the study notes
He is pressing toward Christ while recognizing that Christ has already apprehended him. His confidence is relational and his effort remains ongoing. This permits honest growth without pretending that the work is finished or that a new year guarantees perfection.
Christ connection: the goal is knowing him
Philippians 3 places Christ at the center of Paul's reckoning, hope, and effort. Paul wants to know him, share in the power of his resurrection, and be found in the righteousness that comes from God by faith. His forward movement begins from being apprehended by Christ. This gives the plan its direction: the coming year is an occasion to attend more faithfully to Jesus, receive his words, and follow him. The goal is larger than a record of completed tasks, and honest incompleteness can coexist with persistent obedience.
Bring Time, Plans, and Direction together
Set your three pages beside one another. Psalm 90 asks for wisdom, mercy, gladness, and established work within brief lives. James exposes boasting about tomorrow and calls for the good already known. Philippians directs sustained effort toward knowing Christ. Each reading contributes something the others help you hold in balance.
Choose a small number of commitments that fit these observations. One might protect a regular time of reading and prayer. Another might address a responsibility you have been avoiding. A third might change the way you talk about an uncertain outcome. Make the commitments concrete enough to recognize without assuming that their visible results will be immediate.
Decide how to review them. Ask whether you have acted faithfully, what you have learned, and what circumstances require a change. Avoid making the review a verdict on your worth. It is an opportunity to tell the truth, receive correction, and continue. The passages themselves leave room for dependence, mercy, and growth.
A prayer for faithful attention
An original prayer: Lord, teach me to number my days with wisdom. Help me acknowledge what I cannot control, do the good that is clear before me, and seek Christ with perseverance. Give me honesty about my motives, mercy when I fail, and courage to revise plans that no longer serve faithfulness. Establish the work you entrust to my hands.
Return to the readings as the year unfolds. Their value does not depend on the novelty of a January beginning. A changed circumstance, a disappointment, or an ordinary week can become another occasion to ask for wisdom, reconsider a boast, and renew attention to Christ. Keep the pages open to revision as you continue learning.
Sources and editorial note
- Psalm 90
The complete prayer: God’s eternity, human brevity, judgment, wisdom, mercy, gladness, and established work.
- James 4
The assigned verses 13–17 within the chapter’s treatment of pride, humility, desires, and responsibility.
- Philippians 3
The assigned verses 7–16, with Paul’s preceding credentials and concluding resurrection hope in view.
Prepared with AI assistance for Learn of Christ and checked against the passages and sources listed here. This revision has not received independent human scholarly review. Scripture quotations are from the King James Version unless another translation is named. Prayers and exercises are original examples.