New Year's Resolutions

Everybody have their New Year’s Resolutions to hand in? Did anybody do resolutions from last year? A few. With a few exceptions, we are all pretty good about writing the resolutions but not always good about completing them all. We start off in January with some great intentions and come February and March they begin to drop off the radar and then by summertime we have pretty much forgotten them. I am guilty of doing that. I start lists at the beginning of the year and often I don’t even pick up my list several months into the year. I feel bad about that because I really think that it is a good thing to make New Year’s resolutions and even a better thing to complete the New Year’s resolutions. Instead of just saying I am not going to do it, I am going to go ahead and do them this year, but I have taken a different approach. I decided what I am going to do is come up with a system that pretty much guarantees that I am going to complete my New Year’s resolutions. I am going to keep my resolutions very simple and I am going to put things on there that I would normally tend to do anyway whether I made the resolutions or not. Without further delay, I am going to list my resolutions. This is serious stuff. Eat more. Exercise less. Save less money. Watch more TV. Spend less time in the Bible. Pray less often. I have a pretty good chance of accomplishing these goals. You guys are mocking my goals, which is odd because many of you have made similar resolutions; you just haven’t written them down. You are making similar resolutions because if you don’t make any resolutions, you tend to gravitate towards the things that you would do naturally. A lot of us do these things naturally.

All kidding aside, Christians are not supposed to go through life just gravitating towards the natural things. Christians are constantly supposed to be growing into their image of God. Consequently, we don’t simply value our gifts, we actually value our time. So much so that we try to make the best out of every single day that we have on earth. Proverbs 90:12 says “Teach us to number our days right that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” I love this proverb because it sums up what we are supposed to do. We are supposed to look at every moment on God’s green earth as special and unique because we really don’t know how many days we have been given. We don’t know. Periodically, it makes sense to reflect on how we are doing and that is why it is important to sit down several times a year even and write a few resolutions or two. That is what we are going to do today. We are actually not going to write resolutions, but I am going to give you some tips, ideas, and suggestions to help you write good resolutions. Not only that but to give you some aid in trying to achieve them.

The first principle is before you even write anything down, you should take some time to reflect on things that are really important to you. Don’t just take the list and start writing things. Don’t just take things off the top of our head and put things down. Even though we think those things may be important, we find out they are really not important. We may say they are important, but the more we reflect on them, we realize that they are not important enough to resolve to do them. A resolution is nothing more than a resolve to do something. Webster defines a resolve as “to come to a definite or earnest decision about.” A resolution is a resolve to take the steps necessary, a determination to complete something. If you are not serious about doing that thing, you shouldn’t even waste the time of putting it on your list because you probably won’t do it. Your heart is not into it. I have told this story before but I will tell it again because there is always a different audience here. Back in my Navy days over 30 years ago, I was on a ship and I somehow got involved in playing poker. I loved to play poker. The problem was I wasn’t that good at it. That was the real problem. The paydays would come and I would lose half my paycheck. I got frustrated and tired of losing all my money so I decided to go to the ship chaplain. It was an aircraft carrier so we had our own chaplain. I knocked on his door and he said come in. I said I have been really struggling with this problem. I have been gambling a lot and I really want to stop. He said no you don’t. Get out of here. I said excuse me. He said you don’t want to stop. Come back when you really want to stop. I was kind of offended. The more I thought about it, the more I realized he was absolutely right. I didn’t want to stop gambling. I wanted to stop losing. I didn’t need a chaplain. I needed a poker expert to teach me how to draw a better hand. That is the truth. What was true 30 years ago for me is really true for all of us today. We shouldn’t start writing resolutions unless we are definitely sure that we want to stop these things. In other words, we have to ask the question. Do I really want to make my marriage better? Do I really want to get in shape? Do I want to get my finances better? Do I want to stop an addiction?