iChristian

“Dear God, my prayer for 2013 is a fat bank account and a thin body. Please don’t mix these up like you did last year.” – Unknown

New Year’s resolutions seem to have more clout when they sound nice and spiritual. Another popular Christian New Year’s resolution is this: I’m going to read through the Bible in a year! I’m going to start in Genesis and by the end of December I’ll be finishing up in Revelation!

Again, I’m all for that! But that type of resolution is not a revolutionary statement. Try this on for size:

Revolutionary Statement Number Two: The Bible is living, accurate, and adequate. I’m going to allow it to speak to me.

“Every word of God is flawless; he is a shield to those who take refuge in him. Do not add to his words, or he will rebuke you and prove you a liar.” – Proverbs 30:5-6

God’s Word is true. He told us that thousands of years ago and it’s still true today. Not only is it accurate, it’s adequate. We tend to add a lot of stuff to it like books, CDs, tapes, music, and videos. There is nothing wrong with those things, unless they start to take the place of your Bible.

The big problem with resolutions dealing with Bible reading is (again) that the focus is on you and what you do, rather than on God and what He does. Rather than making a Bible reading resolution, how about this for a New Year’s revolution instead? Rather than trying to get through the Bible in a year, what if you ask God to let the Bible get through you this year?

See the difference!? How about opening yourself up and letting the living Word of God impact your life as it chooses? What would happen if your focus was not on reading a certain number of passages a day, but rather on allowing the Holy Spirit to soak the Word into your soul, and change who you are as a person, and change how you live every day?

Heavenly Father, I praise You that You have given me the Living Word – Your words – through which I can hear from You and experience You. When it comes to my Bible, focus my heart on my relationship with You moment by moment, rather than my reading habits over the course of a year. Amen.

“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 man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.” – G. K. Chesterton

Over the next couple of days, hundreds of millions of people around the world will engage in one of the most common annual rituals on the planet: The “New Year’s Resolution.” I did a Google search for “New Year’s Resolution” awhile back, and 980,370 sites popped up! That’s a lot of “resoluting” going on out there every year!

Personally? I don’t like New Year’s resolutions. I’ve never done them, and if I had, I never would have kept any of them.

I looked up resolution in the dictionary, and it said, “Determination with firmness and intention to change what I’m going to do.” Theoretically and theologically, I actually have a problem with that.

Think about it! A resolution is supposed to change you by changing your behavior. That is actually backwards from the New Testament which reveals that your behavior is changed by an awareness of this fact: Christ has ushered in a dynamic revolution that transforms you from the inside out.

Revolution, on the other hand, is defined as “a radical change in constitution… to change completely.” But the traditional pattern this time of year is to make resolutions, rather than allow revolutions. Paul had something to say about that:

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. – Romans 12:2

Over the next two weeks I am going to take you through Proverbs 30, which contains nine radical revolutionary statements. If taken seriously, they can be used by the Spirit to completely change who you are as a person. These are specific transformations that are caused by the revolution Christ has begun in your heart.

May you start this new year not with temporary resolutions that are bound to fail, but by committing to the eternal revolution that Christ is bringing about in your heart!

Holy Spirit, please take the powerful, unchanging truths of Scripture and make them alive in fresh new ways each day of this coming year. Amen.