A. A woman named Jeanette Case from Erie, PA shared this story in Reader’s Digest.
1. Last year when I called my parents to wish them a happy New Year, my dad answered the phone and I asked him: “Well, Dad, what’s your New Year’s resolution?”
2. Her dad proudly replied: “To make your mother as happy as I can all year!”
3. When her mom got on the phone, Jeanette asked her: “What’s your resolution, Mom?”
4. Her mom replied: “To see that your dad keeps his New Year’s resolution.”
B. Do you like to make New Year’s resolutions?
1. Here are some common New Year’s resolutions:
a. Save money
b. Eat healthy and exercise
c. Find a better job
d. Travel
e. Read more
f. Stop procrastinating
2. Here are some resolutions with a humorous touch:
a. This year I plan to embrace the chaos and aspire to make my bed at least once a month.
b. This year I plan to practice the fine art of remembering where I left my keys at least twice a week.
c. This year I promise to conquer the pile of unread books by turning them into stylish home decor.
d. This year I aim to become a morning person…starting at noon.
e. This year I plan to try yoga – or at least learn how to touch my toes without toppling over.
f. This year I plan to exercise…my right to eat more chocolate.
g. This year I want to learn to say “no” more often…unless it involves dessert.
C. All in all, I think New Year’s resolutions and goals are a good thing even if we fall short of reaching them.
1. I believe we should be regularly striving to improve our mind, take care of our body, and grow our spiritual strength through the disciplines of prayer and Bible reading and study.
2. But today, I would like to go in a direction that you might find unusual or surprising.
3. I want to focus our attention on our hearts and I want to encourage us to resolve to allow God to soften and shape our hearts.
D. I have been reading a book by Mike Cope who is an editor, professor, preacher and writer.
1. The book is called “Megan’s Secrets – What My Mentally Disabled Daughter Taught Me About Life.”
2. Mike writes that Megan was a beautiful pint-sized girl whose only spoken sentence was, “I’m Megan,” yet the best scholars in the world couldn’t teach what she did in her brief life.
3. Megan died at age ten, but her short life exposed some of the insanities of the world and revealed some life-giving secrets.
E. So far, I’ve read through three of the four secrets.
1. The first secret is: “God is a Heart Specialist.”
2. The second secret is: “Weak is the New Strong.”
3. The third secret is: “Life Together is Our Only Hope.”
4. The fourth secret is: “The End is Not the End.”
F. Let me share a few gems about the first three secrets.
1. Mike opened chapter 1 with a quote from Morris West’s novel “The Clowns of God” in which Christ speaks of a child with down’s syndrome: “I gave this mite a gift I denied to all of you – eternal innocence…She will never offend me, as all of you have done. She will never pervert or destroy the work of my Father’s hands. She is necessary to you. She will evoke the kindness that will keep you human…This little one is my sign to you. Treasure her!”
2. Megan’s favorite song was “The Lord’s Army” a song we are all familiar with.
a. I may never march in the infantry, ride in the calvary, shoot the artillery. I may never fly o’er the enemy, but I’m in the Lord’s army. Yes, Sir!
b. After Megan passed, Mike realized that Megan had been preparing them her whole life with her simple little song.
c. It’s like she had been telling them that there were many things she’d never do, but they shouldn’t worry, because she’s in the Lord’s army.
d. She taught them that God would use their brokenness to His glory.
e. She reminded them that the power is God’s not theirs.
f. She taught them that what really matters has to do with the heart: keeping promises, seeking justice in a brutal world, learning to see those in greatest need, and living with courage, joy and unconditional love.
g. In a world where people look at the external qualities of a person, God is a heart specialist who values those qualities that have little to do with what people look like, how they perform, and how smart they are.
3. For the one year anniversary of Megan’s death, several friends organized a memorial celebration in Megan’s honor.
a. These friends used their various gifts – music, art, writing – to mark the richness Megan had brought into their lives.
b. Remembering her love for the song “The Lord’s Army,” Thom Lemmons wrote these words about “limping along in the Lord’s army”: It’s a strange regiment, this “Lord’s army” of which she loved to sing. It’s recruits, rank upon rank, are, every one of them, hurt and defective in some way. It’s an army of the walking wounded, commanded by a general with punctured hands and feet and a gash in his side; a general who leads his host not to attack, but to surrender. And with this, we may be coming close to the center of Megan’s meaning for us: her infirmity, her heroic, dogged struggle, and her eventual defeat reminded us, her comrades-in-arms, of our own concealed injuries.
As we watched her die, as we gathered around her grave, we all peered into ourselves and saw our own mortality, knowing ours was far more well-deserved. Having given her into the hands of angels, we turned again to the fray, more acutely conscious of our own liabilities for the cause, our own poor choices, our own inherited blemishes, our own private defeats.
4. From Megan, they learned that weak is the new strong.
a. It’s the “secret,” the message that fits our cruciform gospel.
b. Jesus honored those who are often invisible in our world: the meek, the mourners, the poor, the hungry and thirsty.
c. As Philip Yancy noted, “Jesus was the first world leader to inaugurate a kingdom with a heroic role for losers.” (Philip Yancy, Rumors of Another World)
d. God has promised to humble the proud and to raise up the humble.
e. In Megan God did just that: He raised up this one who was weak and unassuming to be His minister of reconciliation to all around her.
f. As we follow the One who was crucified in weakness, we experience the deep mystery that Paul discovered: “When I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Cor. 12:10)
5. Mike Cope opened the section about secret three “Life Together is Our Only Hope” with these words from Alister McGrath’s book “The Journey”: So often we try to get on with the life of faith as if we were hermits, struggling on our own. Perhaps we are too proud to admit that we need help; more likely, we have simply failed to realize that others are accompanying us. Every step of the long kingdom road has been graced by the presence of others before us and moistened with their tears, whether of joy or sorrow. We may learn from what they have already experienced, just as we may find reassurance in the knowledge that they have been through the wilderness of this world before us. We may take comfort from the presence of others who even now are making that journey alongside us.
a. Mike goes on to talk about the things he had written about in his journal after Megan died, like: “I’m in a dark hole. I don’t know how deep it is. Or if it gets even deeper. Or if it is ever possible to get out. I can’t breathe. My friends have been my ventilator.”
b. In his journal entries, he kept coming across some version of the phrase “My friends have been my ventilator.”
c. When Mike looked back on his times of greatest grief, he realized that “We were not alone in the pit. Others were breathing for us when we were suffocating, praying for us when we couldn’t.”
6. Praise God for the fellowship of God’s people – we desperately need each other!
7. Life together is our only hope to make it through!
G. So as we think about goals for the new year, I would love for us to dedicate ourselves to some resolutions of the heart.
1. Resolving that the heart is of most importance and that God is a heart specialist.
2. Resolving that our greatest strength comes from our greatest weakness.
3. Resolving that it is okay to desperately need each other.
H. Jesus taught these kinds of truths at the beginning of His greatest sermon – the one that we call the Sermon on the Mount.
1. At the very beginning of that sermon, Jesus described the kind of heart that blesses a person.
2. Jesus said:
a. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for the kingdom of heaven is theirs.
b. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
c. Blessed are the humble, for they will inherit the earth.
d. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
e. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
f. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
g. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.
h. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for the kingdom of heaven is theirs.
3. These are not the kind of people we often consider blessed, right?
a. These are not the kinds of goals and resolutions that often get made for the new year.
4. But I want to encourage us to strive for these resolutions of the heart:
a. Let’s strive for poverty of spirit.
b. Let’s strive for a spirit of mourning.
c. Let’s strive for a spirit of humility.
d. Let’s strive for a spirit of hunger and thirst for righteousness.
e. Let’s strive for a spirit of mercy.
f. Let’s strive for a spirit of purity.
g. Let’s strive for a spirit of peacemaking.
h. Let's strive for a spirit that welcomes persecution.
I. Let’s consider these heart resolutions by considering the beatitudes as paraphrased by Eugene Peterson in The Message.
1. Poverty of spirit: You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.
2. Spirit of mourning: You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.
3. Spirit of humility: You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are—no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought.
4. Spirit of hunger and thirst for righteousness: You’re blessed when you’ve worked up a good appetite for God. He’s food and drink in the best meal you’ll ever eat.
5. Spirit of mercy: You’re blessed when you care. At the moment of being ‘care-full,’ you find yourselves cared for.
6. Spirit of purity: You’re blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.
7. Spirit of peacemaking: You’re blessed when you can show people how to cooperate instead of compete or fight. That’s when you discover who you really are, and your place in God’s family.
8. Spirit that welcomes persecution: You’re blessed when your commitment to God provokes persecution. The persecution drives you even deeper into God’s kingdom.
J. With these resolutions of the heart in mind, I want to encourage us to make King David’s prayer our prayer: Create in me a clean heart O God and renew a right spirit within me. (Psalm 51:10)
1. Allowing God to do the heart surgery that we need will have a profound effect on our relationship with God and our relationships with others.
2. Gone will be our need to produce greatly or perform perfectly in order to receive God’s love and approval.
3. Gone will be our need to look strong or appear perfect in order to receive love and acceptance from our brothers and sisters in Christ.
4. Gone will be our need to compare ourselves with others in order to feel good about ourselves.
5. Gone will be our need to put others down in order to lift ourselves up.
6. Gone will be our need to win every argument or to always be right.
7. Gone will be our need to control or manipulate or judge others because we recognize that God is the owner, master, rewarder and judge of everyone.
K. When all of those things are gone, what will be left is simply an existence immersed in God’s love and God’s grace and God’s strength, where no one is perfect or complete, except in Christ.
1. What we need to strive for and hope for from God is more poverty, more mourning, more humility, more purity, more peace, and more righteousness – things that only God can provide.
2. And then in our life together as the family of God, we can extend to each other what we receive from God – love, peace, mercy, comfort, guidance, support and strength.
L. This is Jesus’ vision for the blessedness of His people and His community.
1. A community of people who recognize and accept their own brokenness and woundedness, sinfulness and imperfection.
2. We are the Lord’s Army, but none of us are fit for service except as God makes us fit.
3. Ultimately, we are just broken clay jars filled with the treasure of God’s Spirit.
4. The apostle Paul explained it this way: But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. (2 Cor. 4:7 NIV)
M. To God be the glory!
1. I pray that 2024 will be a year of experiencing God’s blessings as we embrace the heart of God and express the heart of God in our humility, poverty, purity and peace.
2. For when we admit and embrace our weakness, then can we be filled with God’s strength.
