On Making New Years Resolutions

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?

There is a well kept secret. Even if you have overcome some particular struggle with sin and are experiencing freedom from that pesky troublemaker, it will come back and give you trouble again when you least expect it to. You may have been experiencing victory with your temper. Perhaps you have not lost it in quite some time. Then one day when you have worked too hard, have not eaten when you needed to and some irritating person comes across your path, wham! Temper lost, victory gone.

No the victory is not gone. You have learned to control your temper many times and this one failure or any future failure does not make you a failure. Just shake it off, talk to the Lord about it, tell Him how you feel and then keep on trying. That is why Jesus died for you. So that you would have the ability to continually gain victory over your flesh and experience success in trying to overcome sin. The goal is not perfection because you will never become perfect in your moral behavior as long as you live in this physical body. Not until the Lord removes you from this earth and places your Born Again spirit in your new glorified body will you have a perfect record of sinlessness.

That is why Jesus died for all of your sins. Past, present, and future sins were all taken care of at the Cross. You are clean before your Lord and not one sin is still on your record from His viewpoint. The process of working out how to daily overcome those sins that Jesus has already paid for has to be experienced by you and I in the remaining domain of time. In eternity all of your sins are gone and they have never existed. The effects of Jesus sacrifice was so powerful that it removed all of your sins as though the never existed, pretty cool.

Once the reality of that sinks in, it does not make you want to sin more since all your sins have been taken care of. It make you want to sin less because you realize how much Jesus loves you that He would die for all the dumb things that we do everyday. When we are in love with Jesus, we naturally want to please Him with our life. As long as we keep on trying and we never give up He is well pleased with us.

So go ahead, make those new years resolutions today, and tomorrow when the new year comes and you fail the first hour, just smile and say a “Thank You” to Jesus for paying for that sin and making you perfectly righteous by His blood.

Have a wonderful and fruitful new year in Jesus as you continue to serve Him with All of Your Heart.

Rob Robinson

This entry was posted on Friday, December 31st, 2010 at 3:44 am and is filed under Doctrine, Encouragement, Forgiveness, Holiday's Perspective, Jesus Church, Rob Robinson. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.