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?
We have to ask the same question that Jesus asked the lame man who was lame for 38 years. You might remember that story. He talked to the lame man and for 38 years he was laying in front of the temple begging for money. Jesus asked him “Do you want to get well?” He wanted to hear it from him. He wanted to hear that he wanted to get well. In many ways, that is what he wants to hear from us. The question that you should pose to yourself before you put any resolution down is do you really want to get well. Do you really want to heal your marriage or do you just want to cohabitate together and create a stable environment for your children and when your children graduate then you can get the divorce? Do you really want to get a handle on your finances or do you just want to get rid of that credit card debt hanging over your head and give you enough room on your credit limit so you can continue to do the things that got you in trouble in the first place? Do you really want to quit a habit or get in shape or do you really just want your spouse to quit bugging you about it? Those are the questions you have to ask. Do you really care? Do you really want to get well? Is that important enough to write it down. If you don’t know if it is important enough, I would say ask your spouse. Say I can’t think of anything that is important to me. Is there something that you think is important that I do? Maybe they will be honest with you. Do you think it is important that I quit smoking? She says I think it is important you don’t die of cancer so maybe you should quit smoking. Do you think it is important that I get in shape? Maybe I would like you to be around for a while so maybe it is a good idea to start on that. If you don’t know what is important, ask the one you love the most. Ask the most important people in your life. Ask you kids. Kids do you think it is important that daddy spend more time with you? If the answer is no, then you are off the hook. If they say yes, then you have to put that on your list. What is important to the ones you love should be important to you. You would think so. So before you write down goals, you begin to reflect on the things that are important to you.
The second thing you want to do is attach a sense of urgency to these resolutions and goals. Why do you want to do that? If you don’t make the important things urgent, then all the unimportant but urgent things will crowd out your calendar. They will eat away at your day. All these unimportant but urgent things will come and eat away your day. The endless emails. The texting. The cell phones. The TV show that you just have to watch because it is there. The status on the Facebook that you have to update. All this stuff you have to do. If you don’t make room for the important things, you are going to procrastinate. You have to make them urgent. The reality is some of the things that are the most important things in our life are really not urgent. I say it is important for me to improve my relationship with my spouse and my kids, but I can start that tomorrow. Tomorrow never comes. The next thing you know you are facing divorce court and then it becomes urgent. It is really important I get my finances together but I will start on that tomorrow. Tomorrow never comes or when it does it is as the bankruptcy court. I want to quit smoking this year but I can start on that tomorrow. Then I go to the doctor and I get the diagnosis of cancer and all of a sudden it becomes urgent. The important things are not always urgent. We are all familiar with classroom assignments. The first day of class you get this list of papers that are due the last week of class. You never start on them because they are not urgent. You wait until the last moment. The trick with ensuring that you get some of your important resolutions is to create a sense of urgency to it. How do you do that? You make room on your calendar. If it is important for you to spend time with your spouse to have a monthly date night, you put it on your calendar. If it is important to spend time with your child, you put it on the calendar. If it is important to work out, you put it on the calendar. If it is important to get up and do your Bible study in the morning, you put it on the calendar. I am not saying you ignore all the emails and phone calls. All I am saying is make some room, take some of those important things, break them down into manageable chunks, and place them in the midst of your day. You may not get to it every day, but you will gradually start chipping away. Those things that seemed to be important but weren’t, they just fall off because you never get around to those. If you make those important things a priority, you are going to start chipping away and you are going to start seeing progress. You have to reflect on things that are important and create a sense of urgency to each of those items.
You say I get that. I get the idea that I have to make it important and I have to make it urgent, but how do I make sure that I am putting the right things on the list. How do I make sure that something doesn’t fall through the cracks? For the Christian, it is really quite easy. The third rule is that you cover all your bases. You make sure you are covering the areas of your entire being, which for a Christian is spirit, soul, and body. In the secular world, time-management experts are into categories. When you sit down to evaluate what is important, they often break it down into categories like finances, family, hobbies, education, and that sort of thing. Those are all good things but the problem with the secular approach is they are not interested in balance always. They have your life in little boxes and they are not considering how all those things integrate together. One area affects the other. If a guy is really into finances or making a lot of money, he or she may put the emphasis on that at the neglect of something else. We all know people in the world who put too much emphasis on earning a living and when they get to 50s, 60s, 70s, their families are gone because the neglected that area of their life. Christians don’t see our lives as a bunch of isolated compartments. We see ourselves as a connective whole that is made in the image of God. That is how God sees us. One of the benedictions that we use here quite often comes out of 1 Thessalonians 5:23 that says “May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul, and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” I like this verse because it does speak of the interconnectedness of our entire being. You can’t isolate us into different parts. We are a single unit. We are whole.
As a side note, when you think about the idea of soul, in the non-Christian world they don’t necessarily talk about the soul, but really they are addressing areas of the soul. When they make a goal that says I am going to read some books this year or take a class, they are talking about the mind which is part of the soul. The soul is what makes you you. It is the part of you that is your personality. It is the part of you that differentiates you from somebody else. When somebody says I am going to be working on some of my issues this year like stress, frustration, or anger, they are dealing with the soul issue. When they say I am going to change some behavior or I am going to cut back on an addictive behavior, they are dealing with the will portion, which is the behavioral part of things. That is the kind of stuff that is happening at the soul level. The thing that we have to remember is there is an interconnectivity going on of these three pieces. When one area suffers, the other areas suffer. The secular world is very familiar with this. Some of you have dealt with anxiety and depression. When you have this black cloud hanging over your head and you are feeling depressed, that depression often manifests itself by things like overeating and oversleeping. It also works the other way around. Let’s say you are not getting enough sleep or sleeping or too much, it starts manifesting itself in emotional issues of stress or anxiety or short temper. They are all connected. I had a boss that I worked for about 15-20 years ago. He was a Christian guy who was the president of the company and he was basically embezzling from the company. He took $300,000 over several years. When we finally figured it all out and sat down and looked back on the experience, one thing that was brought to our attention was that over a year or so, he went through three prescription lens changes. That is because he was so stressed out about the money that he was stealing that he was going to get caught that it began to affect his vision. You had an emotional issue, an issue in the soul realm that began to affect the body. That is common. People recognize that they all affect each other. So you have to keep that interconnectedness going. You have to be aware of that. You have to balance out your goals in each of these areas.
Even having said that, the priority is still the spirit. Feeding of the spirit is our number-one priority. The spirit is our direct connection to God. How do we feed the spirit? We feed the spirit by what is called the spirit disciplines. You know the spiritual disciplines include things like prayer, Bible study, service, meditation, silence, and even fasting. As you practice those things, you start becoming open to God and you begin to tap in to the power of God. You need the power of God to deal with all the other things that are going to be attacking you. The things that are going to come against your body and soul. The more you feed the spirit, the better you are able to deal with the attacks of the enemy. I don’t have time to look at the passage, but you might remember Matthew 4 when Jesus, after he got baptized, went out into the wilderness. He went out into the wilderness for 40 days. He fasted and prayed. Then the devil shows up and starts tempting him with things like bread and riches of the world. Basically, what happened is Jesus just kept giving him the word of God. Eventually, Satan left and decided to come back at a more opportune time. You look at that and say after 40 days Jesus must have been tired. He must have been hungry. He was fasting. He must have been weak. He was physically weak but he was probably the spiritually strongest he had ever been. That is what we have to focus on. We have to make the spirit the priority so we can withstand the attacks at the soul level. So we can withstand the attacks at the body level. The temptations there. We need to put some focus on the spirit level. We need to make that our first priority.
The other thing we want to look at is that we want to make sure that when we make these resolutions they are specific and measurable. We can say I want to do something this year to expand my mind. I want to become more intellectual. That is too broad. That is too general. Instead of that, you might say I want to read some books this year. I want to read six or seven books on a particular topic. Or I want to read the classics or something like that. One of the things I got for Christmas this year was one of those e-book readers, the Kindle. At first I wasn’t sure if I liked it, but then I realized you can download up to 3,000 books on this little thing. The neat thing about it is a lot of the books are free. Almost all the classics are free. All the things that we were supposed to read in high school like The Grapes of Wrath and The Jungle. Now I have no excuse for not reading them. I decided I am going to start reading those books and see how far I get. I might not get any further than I got in high school but at least I didn’t pay for them. It is being specific. Those are things you can measure and check off your list. Instead of saying I want to get in shape this year, what you want to say is I am going to join the Y this year. I am going to meet the ladies over at the Y at 6 o’clock for spinning classes and you can start spinning just like that. You are welcome there. That is a lot more specific and measureable than just saying I want to get in shape. On a spiritual level, you can say I want to be spiritual this year. I want to be closer to God. You need to get specific about that. This year I am going to join a home group, which is a plug for the small groups. You received the paper when you came in that had the listings of the small groups being offered this term. There is an opportunity for you. Instead of saying I want to pray more, maybe you need to decide I want to join the prayer group or I want to attend the first Thursday of the month Bellevue prayer group at the Shepherd’s Door. The good thing about going to a home group, you begin to get all those areas covered. You begin to fill the spirit. You begin to be encouraged by relationships with other people, which is the soul side. You also get to feed the body because there is usually some pretty good food there too! Those are things that you could be doing that are measurable, specific, and you can do.
The thing that is good about making your resolutions measurable and specific is it allows somebody to hold you accountable for them. That is when it gets really scary. It also increases the odds that you will accomplish your goals. Ideally, you would write your resolutions and give them to a friend and say do me a favor. Would you please hold me accountable for these resolutions this year? I really want to achieve them. These are really important for me. Would you mind calling me once a week or once a month and just check and see how I am doing. That is scary. That is good because it increases the odds that you may be able to achieve your goals, but it is scary because most of us know that if we start getting behind in our goals and programs we set up, it is embarrassing. It is embarrassing for someone to say how are you doing. You said you wanted to take your spouse out once a month for dinner. How are you doing on that? You said you wanted to spend time with your kids or you said you were going to join the Y or you said you were going to take that class that is going to lead towards getting your masters or college education or GED. How are you doing on that? That is the thing about accountability. It is good but it makes it really scary. That makes you really want to think about the goals if you are going to do that. Don’t put too many on it. Put the ones that are going to stretch you but don’t fill it up with too much because you want it to be a positive experience. You should seek out people that will encourage you in your goal. Not the people that will beat you down if you don’t make your goals. You want to seek out the close friends that really are interested in you becoming all you were meant to be. A lot of people aren’t interested in that. A lot of people are only interested in themselves. You want to seek out those two or three or four people that are really close that you would give those goals to and give them permission to ask how you are doing because they want to see you grow up into the image of Christ. You do all these things and you give the list to your friends.
Finally, you give the list up to God. You give it up to God. You say okay God, I have written all these goals down. I have all these ideas down. Now I am just going to give them up to you. I offer them to you. You do that because ultimately you know it is just some plans that you have made but God may have a different direction for you. There is a scripture that talks about man makes his plans but God determines his steps. It says “In his heart, a man plans his course, but the Lord is the one who determines his steps.” We make all these elaborate plans. We set all these courses. We want to do this. We want to do that. All of a sudden, God throws a wrench in it or it seems like he throws a wrench in it. Things change. Christians realize that ultimately God is the one steering the ship. God is the one at the helm there. God is the one in control. We may say I want to go to college and get my masters. About halfway through college, he says instead of this business degree, I want you to go into ministry. He does things like that. We have to be flexible because we know man makes his plans but God is the one who directs the steps. Let’s say we come out with this elaborate discipleship plan. We are going to grow in spiritual maturity this year. We are going to attend a home group. We are going to do a prayer group. We are going to fast. We are going to pray. We are going to get up in the morning and do our quiet time. We think we are on the path towards spiritual maturity. In the middle of it, God says I think I am going to throw one of these life trials in your life and let you grow through that. Discipleship happens on God’s timing. We can make our plans. We can do the things we are supposed to do, but it is God who ultimately determines our steps. The reason why this is is because as sincere as we are about laying things out and meditating and reflecting on the important things and creating a sense of urgency and balancing them out and getting the accountability and giving it up to God, ultimately we are fallen people. The resolutions that we make at the beginning of the year are tainted by sin. They are tainted by self-desire that aren’t always the best desires. God has the best things in mind for you. Not just the things that you can come up. Not just the things that you can reflect on. He is going to do what it takes to make sure that you grow into his image.
That is all I really have to say today. We should go through and think about these goals. You put them down and create that urgency to them. We give them to somebody else. We balance them out. Ultimately, we just give them up to God. Give them up to a friend and give them up to God. Then we see what happens. One of the things that you received when you came in was a flyer on First Wednesday. The First Wednesday is obviously the first Wednesday of every month. We have done this for about four months now. The idea of First Wednesday is to give people an opportunity outside the Sunday morning experience to come in and begin to go deeper with God. We call it a prayer and praise and fellowship service. It starts off with a meal downstairs. We come up and do prayer and praise. We have been getting about 60 people here which has been great. What we are going to do this week is allow people that want to, that actually took the time to reflect on a couple resolutions this week, a couple things that they would like to change in their life, to just share them in the context of that setting with the people they are sitting next to that evening. Then together pray over each other and offer it up to God. Give it up to God. Watch the power of prayer. Watch the power of God begin to work your life this year for a better you. In closing, “In his heart, a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps.” Let us pray.
