“For what great nation is there that has God so near to it, as the Lord our God is to us, for whatever reason we may call upon Him? And what great nation is there that has such statutes and righteous judgments as are in all this law which I set before you this day?
Only take heed to yourself, and diligently keep yourself, lest you forget the things your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. And teach them to your children and your grandchildren, especially concerning the day you stood before the Lord your God in Horeb,
when the Lord said to me, ‘Gather the people to Me, and I will let them hear My words, that they may learn to fear Me all the days they live on the earth, and that they may teach their children.’
Deuteronomy 4:7-10
What a difference we hope one evening will make. The sun sets on the 31st of December and when it has risen the next morning a new year has begun. All that was of the year past has gone and the New Year is here. New possibilities, new hopes, new ideas and dreams. Making New Year’s resolutions takes the New Year seriously as a new start. In making New Year’s resolutions, many people try to make possible their dreams, ideas and hopes. Coming of the morning of January 1st comes not only a new year but for many of us a hope of a new ME. The trouble is, more years than not, we quickly realize it might be a new year but it’s the same old me.
Although these are Old Testament verses and seems to only apply to the nation Israel, but the reality is also meant for us today in our nations. God is near to us whether we know it or not, and with that we need to start it with a realistic new year’s resolution that starts with us drawing closer to God more so than we have done in the previous year.
Jonathan Edwards, the eighteenth-century revivalist, sat down at age seventeen and penned twenty-one resolutions by which he would live his life. He added to this list until, by his death, he had seventy resolutions.
He put this at the top of his list: “Being sensible that I am unable to do anything without God’s help, I do humbly entreat him by his grace to enable me to keep these resolutions.”
To follow up, each week Edwards did a self-check. He regularly summed up how he was doing and sought God’s help in the process.
There are good things about all the hope that is around at the New Year but there’s also stuff that is not so good. New Year is an opportunity to do some thinking, a kind of inventory on our lives. Maybe we too should sit down and pen our resolutions, but instead of going at it with our own will that we put that list before Jesus so that He can guide you through the execution of each resolution. We may think this is something too small to present before the Lord, but you know what? He wants to be with you in the big things and the little things.
So Jesus answered and said to them, “Have faith in God. For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says.
Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.
Mark 11:22-24
Let’s face it, we have all made those resolutions that we thought we would put in our greatest efforts into accomplishing; things that ranged from exercising every day to eating less. But by the end of January, we’d broken most of them, and then by the end of February we’d forgotten what they were!
In those first few days of January, we realize what unrealistic human beings we are, as well as how undisciplined we can be at keeping our resolve. The trouble then is that you will have to cope with feelings of failure and guilt before the year’s even got started. In most cases we’d broken our resolutions before we’d remembered to write the right year at the top of our cheques. Without Jesus walking with us, New Year’s resolutions can quickly lead us into New Year desolation. Our new years resolutions can be realistic if we take Jesus at His word when He asks us to cast our cares upon Him. When we do that, we can have a realistic new year’s resolution.
Here is someone who I believe made the most realistic new year’s resolution of all:
There was this fellow who decided to make only resolutions this year he could keep. He resolved to gain weight, to stop exercising, to read less and watch more TV, procrastinate more, to quit giving money and time to charity, to not date any member of the cast of Baywatch, and to never make New Year’s resolutions again.
Maybe he’s onto something. Why torture ourselves when we never keep those resolutions for more than a week anyway?
Some might be thinking at this point…if we know we are going to fail, why plan at all?! Some will even say that Jesus tells us to not worry about tomorrow, because this day has troubles of its own. The problem with that is Jesus never tells us that we cannot plan or should not plan, He says don’t worry about tomorrow, deal with today’s issues and problems but plan, and New Year’s resolutions are one way to plan for tomorrow and beyond. But the trick is to plan them with the help of God. We can make realistic resolutions when we pray for God to guide in our picking of those resolutions, because the Bible tells us that “The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, And He delights in his way.” God wants us to plan, and He is delighted that we go on with our plans, trusting Him to get us there, and with Him helping us in the planning there is no need to worry about tomorrow. Folks, you got to understand God’s logic here.
The month of January refers to the Roman god Janus, the god of doorways, beginnings, and endings. He is depicted as a two-faced man. One face looks towards the past and the other towards the future. January is the 'door' to the year, its beginning and marks the end of the old year.
As we think about New Year’s resolutions, we can look in three different directions: facing yesterday, facing today, and facing tomorrow.
Let’s Look at Facing Yesterday
The Israelites were no strangers to looking back. They were constantly challenged to remember their heritage and God’s dealings with them. Moses once encouraged them with these words in verse 9 from our opening Scripture:
Only take heed to yourself, and diligently keep yourself, lest you forget the things your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. And teach them to your children and your grandchildren,
It’s important to face yesterday and the year that it closed. People will tell you to leave the past behind you, and I agree because all that means is that we do not anguish over the mistakes of the past but learn from them. Don’t do the “if I could-a-should-a” dance because you cannot change what has happened, but you can make the course corrections needed to get you back on track.
“Those who fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.” This learning from the past can also be placed in a wider view: “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
“A smart person learns from his own mistakes, but a truly wise person learns from the mistakes of others.”
If we don’t learn from them, and we don’t trust in God to lead us through them, then our resolutions won’t last. How many times have we made completely unrealistic resolutions because we didn’t take seriously what failed in the previous year? We need to face it honestly, not viewing things with our rose-colored specs on, or worse yet, not taking responsibility for your mistakes and blaming others for the things of last year that you don’t particularly want to remember. On the other hand, the previous year might have been so good you’re now worried that it can’t continue. Whatever it is that happened in the last year, spend a bit of time remembering it and learning from it, putting those past mistakes to God, letting Him show how to correct them. It might help to do this with a friend, your pastor, husband, wife, or whoever it is that you can pray with.
You see, as much as we might want this year to be a completely new start, it doesn’t start in a vacuum, it follows what’s been. And what’s has been has brought us to where we are. Remember, wherever you go, there you are. Lots of our resolutions are flawed from the beginning because we don’t look backwards first. Think about the past year. What can we be thankful for, what is there to be pleased about, what was hard, what did we learn, what habits do we want to get out of, what habits are good ones to keep doing? One habit to start or continue is being a doer of the Word of God. This is the thing that I have been harping on all this message…to lean on and trust the Lord, otherwise our resolutions will start today and end tomorrow, and we will act like they were ever mentioned.
But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was.
James 1:22-24
The past is important - we can learn a lot. In fact, if we don’t, we’ll just find things repeating themselves. But after saying all that, the past isn’t where we’re to live now. We reflect and review the past to resolve to continue on.
God doesn’t intend us to live in the past. Looking back at His goodness is intended to root us firmly in the rich soil of faith, which provides the environment in which we can grow with Him into new things.
Now, Facing Tomorrow
It’s no good going into the New Year just looking over your shoulder; for that fact, it is not a good idea to do so walking anywhere…imagine what you might walk into. We need to try and focus on where we are going.
So where are you aiming? Which direction are you facing in? In facing the New Year, we are facing some new possibilities and opportunities. In making resolutions, think perhaps about where and what you want to be this time next year - what habits, what in your character do you want to have developed? - Are they those that you want to have shaken off? The old saying is true - if we aim at nothing, we’ll hit it every time.
Remember what you have learnt from the year gone by and follow it with hope for what might be, what are you aiming at this year? It might be that you want to know your friends better by this time next year, or to have grown closer with God, your family, to be healthier, fitter, slimmer. Whatever, think about tomorrow, the kind of person you want to be, the kind of friend, mother, father, sister, brother, employer, employee, friend, or neighbor. Who do you want to share the Good News of Jesus with this year? Share it with your closest friend or write it down, put it in an envelope, seal it and open it on January 1st next year. Try and hold yourself to it.
Last be not Least, Facing Today
Now, in the light of the long-term perspective, how can you get there? If your aim is to be healthier, how can you do it? How do you eat an elephant? Answer, a bite at a time, inch by inch everything is a cinch. If you want to get fitter, then don’t aim to run a Marathon in three months’ time. What can you realistically do? If you want to develop relationships - children, then why not resolve to spend some more time in a week with them doing things they want to do. If you want to grow in your relationship with God, don’t resolve to spend an hour every day praying, make a resolution to spend an extra 15 minutes a day praying and reading your Bible.
Now I’m not saying don’t stretch yourself, I want to encourage us all to set our sights high, to work hard at those things in our lives we feel are most important, so let’s be realistic and optimistic, and again, put Jesus in the planning.
The last thing is as important as the resolutions you make. Don’t just do it on your own, share your resolution with those you are closest to…get them to help you and hold you accountable, and you can do the same for them. Get support round you, be a support to others. People, who would encourage you, ask you how it’s going, people who are rooting for you. None of us were made to do it on our own. None of us have got it together, but together we’ve got it.
So, I encourage you this New Year to face yesterday and all that last year was, to face tomorrow and all that you want to do and to be in this new year, and to face today, to work out how you’ll get there and then to face those around you and the God above you and with gratitude for the life in this new year. Go on, don’t just seize the day, and seize the year.
