NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS

At the beginning of a new year, a high school principal decided to post his teachers’ New Year’s resolutions on the bulletin board. As the teachers gathered around the bulletin board, a great commotion started. One of the teachers was complaining, "Why weren’t my resolutions posted?" She was throwing such a temper tantrum that the principal hurried to his office to see if he had overlooked her resolutions. Indeed, he had mislaid them on his desk. As he read her resolutions he was astounded. This teacher’s first resolution was not to let little things upset her in the New Year.

Do you make New Year’s resolutions? If you don’t make them it is probably because they are so hard to keep, and we would rather not have to deal with the guilt. The fact is our Christian faith calls us to always be willing to examine our lives and look for ways to make ourselves better in the eyes of God. We don’t need to make life changes in the form of New Year’s Resolutions, but the new year is as good a time as any.

In Ephesians 5:17-32 Paul challenges us to transform ourselves in one of the many lists that can be found in his letters. He writes we can no longer live as the non-believers live, in the futility of our minds, alienated from God by hard hearts toward God, greed, and impurity.

In the book The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge puts in modern language what Paul is calling us to do. He writes, “Surprisingly few adults work to rigorously develop their own personal mastery. When you ask most adults what they want from their lives, they often talk first about what they would like to get rid of: “I’d like my mother-in-law to move out,” they say, or “I’d like my back problems to clear up.” The discipline of personal growth (actually “mastery”), by contrast, starts with clarifying the things that really matter to us, of living our lives in the service of our highest aspirations.”

Let’s look at some of Paul’s challenging resolutions. Paul challenges us to speak the truth to your neighbors. Most people agree that being honest is a good thing, but when it may cost us something many people will compromise their integrity. Do you need to decide to be more honest?

Be angry, but do not sin, and do not let the sun go down on your anger. This is good advice, but hard to live by, especially if you are married. Do you go to bed angry at your spouse, children, parents, or someone else that is important to you? Do you have anger issues you need God’s help to resolve?

Do not tear other people down, but use words that build people up. It is not hard for us to think of people who tear others down with the words they use. There are plenty of people in the world who attack others. Who do you know that is really good at building others up? Are you that kind of person?

Replace bitterness, wrath, or slander with kindness, forgiveness, and tender hearts. Forgiveness is hard enough to do, but Paul calls us to “forgive each other as God in Christ has forgiven you.” This is a high calling indeed, and perhaps beyond the ability of any of us to actually accomplish, at least if we rely only on our own personal resources to do so. But that is the point of this whole section of scripture. We cannot become the person described in these scripture passages if we rely on our own abilities alone. These are God-sized resolutions, and therefore require God to give us the change of heart necessary to successfully become this person.

My final two challenges for this year, is to make a resolution big enough that you cannot succeed without the power of God. And then pray without ceasing that God will give you the strength to achieve your resolution. Then I challenge you to tell one person what that resolution is and ask them to hold you accountable. If we allow someone else to help, encourage, pray for, and even criticize us we will likely be much more successful as accomplishing some life changing resolutions. May you have a happy New Year in the Lord.