It seems to be a fact of life that we are not really very good at keeping our new years resolutions. Making them is easy. Just look at your life and see what needs improvement. Oh never mind, there is too much that needs improvement. Better to just focus on one or two things and see how it goes…
I think that most of us really want to change our self and our life for the better. I think that we all have good intentions. The problem is that our good intentions do not have the support of our actions. It should encourage us that the writer of two-thirds of the New Testament also found that it was nearly impossible for him to keep the promises that his mind made to his heart.
Romans 7:15-23 “For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I want to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that is what I do. If, then, I do what I don’t want to do, I agree with the law that it is good. But now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.”
Romans 7:24-25 “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.”
Paul said that he really wants to do right things. The problem is that when he sets out to do them he finds that it is impossible for him to perform them. It is the sin that dwells within his heart that prevents him from keeping his resolutions.
So what do we do then? Not make any resolutions at all and just do whatever our lower nature tells us? Hardly. Even if we did that, which most of us already have tried, it made us even more miserable.
The answer is to make the resolutions, and determine to do them. Pray and ask the Holy Spirit to enable us to perform all of our good intentions. And then When we fail, not if. When we fail, we repent and get back up and try again and again, repeating that series of attempts, failures and retries our entire life. Eventually we do get better at overcoming sin and temptation. Eventually some of the most troublesome sins dissapear… Or do they?
