New Years Resolutions

Americans have this ritual of making New Year’s resolutions and 3 weeks later ditching them for what is comfortable and familiar. If you want proof, visit a Fitness Club the first three weeks in January and you will barely be able to move. But if you visit in February; you’ll have all the room you need.

Have you put any thought into a New Year’s resolution, or do you forgo this ritual knowing you won’t be able to keep those resolutions?

For me, resolutions are like diets. We go on them and we “fall off the wagon” so to speak, and then quit. If you’re one of the fortunate ones who actually stick to a diet and make your goal, then what? Most of us stop dieting and go back to a “normal” way of eating and start gaining back the weight we lost.

Resolutions, like diets, need to have a makeover. I learned a long time ago that diets don’t work. What does work is learning to eat a new way. When we fall off that wagon, instead of quitting a diet, we choose to do better the next day (or week, or month depending on how long you sulked), and hopefully every time we pick ourselves back up, we’ve taken something away from our failures and can apply that going forward.

We all want to better ourselves, or at least those I’ve talked to do. The problem is that we make lofty resolutions trying to be the ideal person without any practice and expect it to work. Then we give up when we don’t get results right away. Resolutions shouldn’t have an end date; they should be a work in progress.

And what type of resolutions do we have? Do we want to be richer, thinner, healthier…? Nothing is wrong with wanting these things, but these are things to please ourselves and others.

My new blogger friend Tracy at Thirsty for Him ( http://tracyberta.blogspot.com/ ) posted her New Year’s resolution recently. She started it out with the verse below which I find so appropriate.

“Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me…But, one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal…” –Philippians 3:12-14

Paul had the right idea. He didn’t want things; he wanted the power of Christ in his life. He knew his “resolution” was about staying on the path. He admits his failures when he says ‘forgetting what is behind” and encourages us to strain “toward what is ahead”. In the verse right before verse 12 he says that all he wants is to know Christ and the power that raised him to life and then goes on to say that he knows he hasn’t obtained that yet and he’s far from perfect, but he presses on!

So, what is your New Year’s resolution? Are you willing to press on even when you know you will slip? This applies to all diets, fitness, and other typical resolutions. But I would hope that if you haven’t already made your resolution that maybe you’ll consider something deeper than what we can have on the outside. How about connecting with friends on a deeper level or giving of your time to a worthy cause? How about getting to know the Lord, our maker, on a deeper more personal level and to know Christ and the power that raised Him?

Will you mess up? Sure you will. But if it’s worth having, it’s worth working for, and I promise you, knowing the power of Christ, knowing His promises to us and knowing HIM is worth it.