How Not to Make and Keep A Resolution.....Monday

Let me clarify, I have never fully kept a resolution I made for a New Year. So this year I told myself to not make any resolutions. Five days into January and so far so good: I have no resolutions. Nada. Zilch. Nothing. I do believe this is going to be a very good year.

Having a bit of a background in perfectionism, performance based self-worth, and a love for list making, my resolve to not resolve is actually requiring effort for me. I can remember receiving a diary for Christmas each year as a young girl and filling in the first page with my resolutions. I usually wrote in the lockable book only about 6 more times each year but I always re-read the list that I never accomplished. 

Was it me? Or the list? Were the goals too broad and undefined? Did I need support and didn't know how to get it? Or was I trying to change my way of being and doing in order to achieve a perfect vision I had for myself? 

As I continue with my effort to resist resolution thinking I know I will face tougher situations than the past 5 days have brought to me. The real work will come as I face times where I will be tempted to change or fix myself or others! But I know that it is not possible to do either:

And I am convinced and sure of this very thing,

that He Who began a good work in you

will continue until the day of Jesus Christ

[right up to the time of His return], 

developing [that good work] 

and perfecting and bringing it to full completion in you.

Philippians 1:6 AMP

 For God is at work within you,

helping you want to obey him,

and then helping you do what he wants.

Philippians 2:13 TLB

When I am at my saddest and loneliest, I am desiring one thing in particular: to be loved and accepted no matter what kind of mess I am in. There is One who loves each of us in exactly that way even when those around us are not:

 What can we ever say to such wonderful things as these? 

If God is on our side, who can ever be against us?

Romans 8:31 TLB

He is merciful and tender toward those who don’t deserve it;

 he is slow to get angry and full of kindness and love.

Psalm 103:8 TLB

Dear Lord, thank You for a new year. May we live each day aware of Your love, and may we choose to share Your love and kindness with those who cross our paths- not for our own agendas and desires, but simply because the greatest of these three things: faith, hope, and love, is love. In Jesus name, amen.

Click to hear Hillsong perform "I Surrender "

Written by Mary M. Wilkins