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God's New Year Resolution




New year celebration goes back to thousands of years. The calendar and custom may have been different. But history talks about celebration of New Year as a time of renewal and refreshing. The answer to that lies somewhere in the spiritual instincts of man. A new calendar tells us we have been given a fresh opportunity as a gift to build our lives, as they ought to be and to shed off some of the old and bad things and to refresh. We need renewal.

One of the gifts that a pastor received for Christmas was a book titled, “How to preach better”. That was an eye opener for him. But the truth of the matter is that we all can be better. One of the ways we try to achieve this is by making resolutions. And then we wait for the New Year to come around to make them. Resolutions can and should be made any time as and when it is needed or desired. When you are running your credit cards and going deeper into debt, don’t wait until the New Year to start a resolution. When your doctor tells you need to watch your weight, it would not be wise to wait for the New Year to start eating healthy.

January is a terrible month to commit to resolutions. That awful post-Christmas guilt suddenly makes us want to be better people and we resolve that this year we will do those things we've wanted to do for years. Gym owners rub their hands with glee at the prospect of people with great intentions signing up in the first week of the year. Every new year gym registration comes with a fresh pang of guilt that you slacked off weight training or didn’t stay on the rowing machine long enough last year. Television broadcasts are full of ads touting nicotine patches, gums and sprays during this time of the year. The bloated cartoon characters depicting the adverse effects of smoking look strangely familiar. It is the past guilt that drives many people to re-do resolutions.

Many people make New Year resolutions for the sake of making some. According to a recent YMCA survey of more than 1,000 adults, less than a quarter of respondents kept their resolution in 2014. An overwhelming 71 percent said they tried but fell short, and 40 percent confessed that they made it through only a couple of weeks or months. From weight loss to quitting smoking, the list of most popular changes we wish to make in our lives seems to stay the same year after year. As any good consultant will tell you (for a nice fee, of course), people don’t often know what is best for them and when is it needed for them. We try to run with the crowd because we don’t know what we want.

Make only one resolution and stick to it. Your chances of success are greater when you channel energy into changing just one aspect of your behaviour. St. Paul says, "This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 3:13,14). St. Paul is making a resolution to strive for the future and he is focused on it. Paul is saying that in order for you to strive forward, you need to identify the 'deterrences and compellences'. Identify what deters us the most and what is the compelling factor or motivation. Deterrences can be failures of the past and worried about failure again. How many times we have heard, “ we have tried that in the past” as an excuse to try something.

The future is a promise filled with oppprtunities and possibilities. Strving forward as a sprinter to reach the goal and win a prize is the compllence. It is not we should forget history.  Leave the things that are behind us that drag us back, heavy weights pulling us backwards. “You cannot drive forward too long by looking at your rear view mirror.” Look forward to see what resolutions have God prepared for you. It is about following God’s resolution for you. God’s resolutions for us are the best ones. They are not based on the failures of the past. Those are the ones that God had made for each of us even before we were born. He resolves to see me as the person that I should be according to His will and plan for me, and not as who I am at the moment, or who I was in the past.

Happy New Year to all!!

Blessings

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Fulll sermon audio: Mathew Philip 

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