Realistic New Year's Resolutions

“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.