First Presbyterian Church Fort Dodge

We find ourselves in the season of New Year’s Resolutions. Each morning, my email inbox fills up with blog articles and newsletter emails about what to resolve to do and how to do it for the new year. Meanwhile, other emails say that traditional New Year’s resolutions don’t work; we should order this new goal-setting course, etc…

To date, this year, I have set no formal New Year’s resolutions. For some reason, every time somebody asks me what I’m resolving to do, nothing seems to come to the forefront of my mind. When I reflect to myself, nothing sticks. It’s not that I feel like I’ve arrived – far from it.

It’s just that in recent years, most of the New Year’s resolutions haven’t fully come to fruition. “This will be the year that I eat healthier food!” “By the end of this year I’ll fit into all my clothes!” “I’ll write for an hour every day this year!” “I’ll wake up early and spend an hour with God every day this year!”

These bold proclamations might not be exactly what you’ve proclaimed, but many of us have found times when we’ve said we’ll do something grand and it just didn’t pan out. In the back of my mind, I remember Jesus’ words from Matthew 5:37 and James’ words from James 5:12: “Let your ‘yes’ be ‘yes.’” Are we better off not making a commitment at all?

Do we disappoint God every time we say we’ll do something and then fail to follow through? To be sure, we gain a certain level of accountability when we make a public proclamation. We build excitement toward accomplishing a goal. But is there more to it than that?
Let’s say we succeed in a resolution to read our Bible every day this year. Do we feel great about ourselves because of all the time we spent in God’s word or because we read it every day this year? Would we feel less great about ourselves if we read our Bible 360 days this year? It’s not quite a year, but it’s still 360 days we did read our Bible. 
Goals aren’t bad by any means. But as you consider to what God is calling you to strive this year, ask yourself, what is this goal accomplishing? How will I feel if I partially accomplish it? What does this goal say about how I view myself? About how I believe God views me? I once asked my family over dinner if reading the Apocryphal books of the Bible “counted” for a devotional. My dad looked at me strangely, “Count for what?” I leave you with wiser words than mine. In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul say, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast.”

Blessings,
Austin D. Hill