Your New Year’s Resolutions: Ready to change!
How are you going to grow in the year ahead?
Happy New Year!
This week, we're going to be spending time thinking about New Year's Resolutions (NYR). I'm not just talking about the quirky kind you may have seen around the internet, such as:
1. Stop making lists
B. Be more consistent
7. Learn to count
Resolutions are a funny thing. You either love them...or hate them. And the reality is we often fail to keep them, so we hesitate to take them too seriously.
So....have you made any yet? Broken any yet?
Confession: I am not really a NYR kind of person. I have never seriously made a NYR. So, are they a waste of time? Are they really something that "goes in one year and out the other"? And....what is so magical about goal setting on January 1st?
A good time for change?
Actually, research says that this time of the year is a good time for change.
Studies also show that resolution makers are ten times more likely to reach their goals than those who just wish for change (but never take practical action).
According to experts, of the people who make NYR...
- 50% never achieve them
- 25% sometimes achieve them
- 8% achieve their resolutions
(What happened to the other 17%? Maybe their resolution was to now answer surveys...)
No one likes the pressure of having to change. No one likes to risk failure. But....isn't there something inside us that pushes us to grow....to learn....to change as we flow through life?
What do you want to change?
Lots of us strive to be:
- A better person
- A better friend
- A better parent
- Better at relationships
- Better at approaching work and life
Why are we always striving for better?
Because we are made with a blueprint; a design to grow and change throughout our lives. God made us that way. He has a plan to help us grow. Think of God as a heavenly potter, shaving off the rough edges of the unfinished clay. Through the growing and changing of life, He can make us more holy....more like Jesus.
And I think that's a resolution worth having – to become more like Christ.
Consider this awesome quote by G. K. Chesterton:
"The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective. Unless a man starts on the strange assumption that he has never existed before, it is quite certain that he will never exist afterwards. Unless a man be born again, he shall by no means enter into the Kingdom of Heaven."
We're going to spend this week thinking about the kinds of changes God wants to make in our lives. As we do, why not ask yourself, "how do I want my life, and my faith, to grow this year?"
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