20...25!

 January, 2025.  Happy New Year!  While the celebration comes and goes, the new year stays with us.  And so as we look into 2025, we can hardly avoid encountering the ever-popular new year’s resolution thing.  There is value in evaluating where we are and planning so that we can use the year in constructive ministry and growth.  But as I like to say at this time of year, the performance-oriented, self-improvement perspective of many a new year’s resolution is not particularly Biblical or worthwhile.

 In Psalm 139, David, a man after God’s own heart and King of Israel, invites the LORD to search him and know him, to reveal sin that needs attention.  That is an excellent place to start.  Unlike David, we have the indwelling Holy Spirit to search and know us, to convict us of sin and reveal areas in our lives that need growth.  But then what?  It is easy to take the popular route and to invest our focus and energy on fixing ourselves, to measure our progress by our performance, and to compare ourselves to others to measure our success.  Or, we can sit back, put our feet up, and expect the Lord to change us while we expend no effort.  Neither option reflects an effective, Biblical approach to change.

 

The path of change requires a collaborative effort between the Holy Spirit and us.  Please consider with me two portion of Paul’s epistles:

 

For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.  Ephesians 2:8-9

 

So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.  

Philippians 2:12-13

 

Paul’s words encourage us to appreciate the powerfully good news of the Gospel.  We have been saved by grace through faith.  We cannot earn our righteousness, our rightness with God, or our salvation.  We are blessed beyond measure.  But beyond our salvation, we are called to pursue a life that reflects our new life in Christ, and that requires confession, repentance, and obedience on our part as we depend upon Christ’s indwelling Holy Spirit.

 

The continuing good news is that as we seek God’s best for us, He takes even our feeblest effort and does His loaves and fishes thing: Just as Christ took the meager amount of bread and fish from His disciples to feed large crowds, He takes our small steps of faith and magnifies and multiplies them.  As we turn away from our self-focused desires and the counterfeit joys offered by the world, He works to conform our character to that of Christ.  We are able to love well and know deep and abiding joy.

 

We don’t have to change…. We get to change and be changed….