What 2025’s Verse of the Year reveals about our hearts
- MHBPC Admin
- Jan 16
- 4 min read
2025’s Verse of the Year, Isaiah 41:10 is a familiar one, and understandably so. But it reveals the cry of our hearts for strength and encouragement amid the messiness of life in this fallen world.
Yet the cry of God’s heart is indubitably love. May this article1 spur our hearts to embrace a different verse, and in so doing, follow in our Lord’s footsteps and truly realise the strength and encouragement we have been seeking in life.
Pastor Luwin Wong
Every December, YouVersion, the creator of the world’s most downloaded Bible apps, releases its Verse of the Year – the passage most shared, highlighted and bookmarked worldwide.
Globally, the top spot once again went to Isaiah 41:10: “Don’t be afraid, for I am with you. Don’t be discouraged, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will hold you up with my victorious right hand.”
If this all feels like déjà vu, that’s because it is.
Over the past decade (2016-2025), Isaiah 41:10 was chosen five times (2025, 2023, 2022, 2020, 2018).
The runner-up, Philippians 4:6, appeared twice (2024, 2019). The following verses each emerged once: Matthew 6:33 (2021); Joshua 1:9 (2017) and Romans 8:28 (2016).
Taken together, our engagement with these verses say the quiet part out loud: “God, I’m freaking out – are You here?”
This anxiety is clearly localised as well. In 2025, Singapore’s most-engaged verse was Jeremiah 29:11: “For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.”
According to YouVersion, Singaporeans turned to Scripture this year with a noticeable intensity. Searches related to “anxiety”, “stress,” and “hope” topped the list.
This reflects not only our local emotional landscape, but a global trend: The world is reaching, sometimes desperately, for the reassurance of God’s presence.
As Bobby Gruenewald, founder and CEO of YouVersion, said: “In a world full of anxiety and uncertainty, people are drawn to God’s promise to be with us, to strengthen us and to help us. That message never gets old because the need for it is universal and timeless.”
Fear not … but evidently we all do, a lot
Clearly, we’re anxious, overwhelmed and grasping for something – Someone – to hold us steady.
Isaiah 41:10 and Philippians 4:6 speak directly to our fear, dismay and worry. And yet, even when we feel like we’re coming undone with alarming regularity, these verses remind us of divine reassurance, presence and peace.
God’s presence is not contingent on our emotional stability. God is with us, for us, upholding us.
The world is reaching, sometimes desperately, for the reassurance of God’s presence.
It’s worth remembering that Isaiah 41 was spoken to Israel in exile. These were people whose lived reality did not match what they had been promised. They felt displaced, disoriented and unsure about tomorrow.
Sound familiar?
Jeremiah 29:11, Joshua 1:9, Romans 8:28 and Matthew 6:33 – Verses of the Year in previous years – echo the same sentiment. These verses tap into our collective ache for God to hold everything together … because we can’t.
Millions of believers gravitating toward “fear not” verses reveals something deeply human: We are exhausted. And the answer to that exhaustion will not come from yet another to-do list, no matter how holy or spiritual it may be. We’re longing for presence, not performance.
Our culture is obsessed with achievement, efficiency and self-sufficiency. But “fear not” isn’t a productivity hack. It’s a reorientation of our hearts to become rooted in chesed ( חֶסֶד ) – the steadfast loving kindness of God who abides with us and in us. He is the one who upholds, strengthens and guides.
Our part, if we dare, is to show up, breathe, trust… rinse and repeat.
A Hope for 2026: A Return to Love
The verses we cling to are windows into our anxious souls. They reveal what we fear, what we long for and what we need from God.
But perhaps 2026 can be the year we don’t only hold on to the verses that tell us not to fear, but also reach for those that remind us to love.
My prayer, hope and slightly ragged longing is this: That my most-engaged verse for 2026 would be John 13:35, where Jesus said: “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
Jesus didn’t say: “They will know you are my disciples if you win arguments, secure influence or build platforms.” He said: “Love one another.”
This verse matters especially these days, when Christian witness is often caricatured by polarisation, suspicion, defensiveness and triumphalism in culture wars.
Jesus didn’t say: “They will know you are my disciples if you win arguments, secure influence or build platforms.”
He said: “Love one another.”
Loving our neighbours – especially when everything seems overwhelming, broken and beyond our control – is both our evangelism and our apologetics.
This kind of love reorients us away from the gravitational pull of anxiety and back into the life-giving orbit of God’s mission. It transforms our self-preservation into self-giving, turns us from fear into faithfulness and thrusts us from retreat into engagement.
Imagine if John 13:35 became the Church’s most-engaged verse: Conversations would soften, communities would heal and churches would become true sanctuaries for the broken and lost. Our public witness would speak plainly for itself, needing no footnotes or addendums.
For a decade, we’ve reached instinctively for verses of comfort, reassurance and divine presence – and understandably so. Every one of us is searching for peace amid the storms of life.
But counterintuitively, focusing first on loving others may actually alleviate our anxiety. Love has a way of drawing us outward to others instead of curling us inward to ourselves.
Perhaps courage grows best not merely from being comforted, but from joining God’s mission to restore wholeness to this messy, bewildering and yet beautiful world.
In 2026, may we not only “fear not,” but – through the loving-kindness of the Father, the courage of the Son and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit – become known, unmistakably and undeniably, by our love for one another.
1 Wong, Giok Leigh. (2025, Dec 26). What 2025’s Verse of the Year reveals about our hearts. Salt&Light
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