Each year, many of us around the world willfully make resolutions on how we are planning to improve ourselves. We talk about how much weight we want to lose by next Christmas, or maybe how we plan to do more for the Lord in our home, church, or community, or maybe even how we plan to develop a closer and more meaningful relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. While these resolutions start off with the noblest of intentions, there are some things that both psychology and sociology can tell us about ourselves – if we dare to listen.
There have been numerous studies conducted to find out what drives us to make resolutions and why many of us fail to achieve them. According to these studies, the average person will make between five to seven resolutions; the first of the resolutions never makes it past the middle of February and the last one usually ends by mid-March. A little less than 13% of the 1,500 polled in one study actually kept their resolutions long enough to become life-changing habits.
For me, 2012 was a year that not only was full of spiritual battles but of personal challenges and changes as well. I made my resolutions without putting much thought into how I planned to accomplish them. Not once did I ask God to lay on my heart the areas where He wanted to see me grow nor did I ever ask God to give me the strength needed to follow through on the areas I had chosen for my resolutions. The end result was that two of my resolutions never made it past February while the third continued to limp along. Sure, my intentions were noble; I planned to lose 25 pounds, to finish a book I have been working on, and to expand the printing ministry we operate out of our church. Needless to say, on New Year’s eve as we were participating in the watch-night service, I began thinking about my failures and shortcomings in 2012.
The next morning, my family and I had breakfast and went on a day-trip to celebrate New Year’s Day with my daughter’s godparents as we have done each year for the past five years. As we were on our trip back I decided that this year, instead of making resolutions just to see them broken within a few months, I would spend time in prayer and ask God to help me to become the man, the husband, and the father He wants me to be. Instead of making this a New Year’s resolution, I decided to make this a “new day resolution” each morning as I do my daily devotions; I ask God to mold and shape me . After all, it’s recorded in Lamentations: This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope. It is of the LORD’S mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness (Lamentations 3:21-23). Instead of focusing on trying to make broad changes over an entire year, I will simply take things the way that God intended – one day at a time.
There is one thing that I now grasp that’s taken me nearly 25 years as a Christian to learn – I cannot do anything outside of God and that I must seek and totally rely on His will for my life; I must learn to wait for the Lord instead of taking things into my own hands. The book of Lamentations comes into mind as I began thinking about how I am approaching this new year day by day: The LORD is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him. The LORD is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him. It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the LORD (Lamentations 3:24-26).
