New Year's Resolutions

For the record my New Year’s resolution lasted about 12 hours. I believe my best was about 6 days but I wouldn’t stake my life on it. Resolutions are funny things. We all make them even if it isn’t at this time of year. I resolved to quit smoking in my younger days about 15 times (and that was just the first day) but the problem is we always seem to fail. We can’t help it , it’s our very nature. We seem to take some perverse joy in asking everyone around us about their New Year’s resolutions. Hearing from them what they think their bad points are and knowing in the back of our mind that their failure at achieving the goal they set puts them on an equal footing with us. New Year’s resolutions are the great equalizer. They go to show that we, on our own, and as a bunch of people can’t even fix one fault in ourselves. What amazes me even more is that as a Christian I know this before I even make a resolution but I still go ahead and make one anyway. So why don’t they work? Well I’ve put my finger on two reasons. One is that as a human I have no chance of changing my nature. Can a dog wake up and say it now wants to be a cat? (Tessa the wonder-cat would have torn my leg off if I would have suggested that a cat would ever even consider being a dog.) Shake our fist as we may, we come out of the womb fallen people. Only the Maker can remodel what is His to begin with and that raises the second point. What you and I consider our bad points and hence make the top of our New Year’s resolutions list may not be what God wants to work on at that point. It’s like me taking the car to a mechanic, and saying “it’s too slow.” My mechanic in his wisdom says “ first lets make it stop.” Or as in my case, “I gotta quit smoking,” when God said, “first lets look at your tongue, you’re hurting far more people with it than the smoking is hurting you.” (And yes, I eventually did give up smoking.)
This year I would encourage you to abandon your resolutions especially the ones that effect your personal growth. Let God show you what
areas need the work and don’t get discouraged if what you consider major is not the top of God’s list. Instead of creating a reading or study list this year, browse by title and let the right book jump off the shelf at you. Finally might I suggest that this year only one resolution is worth our effort and that is: To trust God with our lives more and ourselves with it less.