New Year - New Commitments

New Year – New Commitments

December 28, 2008 Evening Service

Immanuel Baptist Church, Wagoner, OK

Rick Boyne

Message Point: Let’s make resolutions that can actually change our lives.

Focus Passage: Philippians 3:13-14

Introduction: Easy resolutions/failed resolutions

I. Commit yourself to forget your failures - Philippians 3:13-14

a. Economy is the failure of 2008. For many of us our failures are painful memories. Maybe for you it is a memory of how you failed in a relationship. You made the wrong decisions, said and did the wrong things and the relationship ended.

II. Commit yourself to give up your grudges- “Bear with each other and forgive each other whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you” Col 3:13

a. Harboring a grudge is about nursing a dislike for someone.

What you need to know is that grudges are dangerous because they are destructive.

Grudges destroy marriages.

Grudges break up families.

Grudges ruin friendships.

Grudges split churches.

III. Commit yourself to restore your relationships - If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone” Romans 12:18

a. Some relationships might have gone wrong in your life because of what other people have done and they might well not want that relationship restored. God recognizes that. That is why he starts by saying “If its possible”

b. how many marriages represented here are not all they should be or could be simply because someone won’t say “I was wrong, I am sorry, will you forgive me”

IV. Commit yourself to turn your back on your sinful ways - “Do not let sin control the way you live, do not give in to its lustful desires … we are no longer slaves to sin” Romans 6:2

a. Just after the Civil War, when slaves were freed, many chose to remain with their masters and live as slaves.

b. That is what the NT says that many of us do, when we continue to sin.

c. Jesus died to set us free, but we chose as slaves to sin.