New Year's Resolutions

Have you managed to keep any of your New Year's Resolutions, thus far?  Or did you even bother making them this year?  Making resolutions for personal improvement may be helpful, if only to help us keep track of our progress (or lack thereof) toward our personal goals.  But spiritual goals are also important.

Proverbs 24:16 reminds us that "a just person falls seven times, and rises up again: but the wicked shall fall into mischief."  (Lest you be discouraged when you fall eight or more times, note that this is a symbolic number.  See Matthew 18:21-22).  Falling is part of the human condition, but rising up again is what sets apart the just (or righteous) person.  This seems to be a Bible pattern that might seem surprising at first glance.  Apparently, what distinguishes the righteous and the wicked in God's sight is their response when warned of their sin.  (Ezekiel 3:19-21 seems to describe this well).

Psalm 40:2 reminds us that though we cannot rise up again by our own strength, "He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings."  Jesus is the one who God set up to "give repentance to Israel" (Acts 5:31).  (See also 2 Timothy 2:25).  So even the ability to repent (that is, to "turn around again" and go in the right way) is a gift of God.  What distinguishes the righteous then, is only our choice to accept the gift of repentance, and forgiveness which has been given us.

Once we accept the gift of repentance and forgiveness, God not only brings us out of the "horrible pit" we have fallen into, but sets our feet on the rock of a renewed life in him, so we need not fall again.  However, lest we be discouraged, 1 John 2:1 reminds us, "My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous."  God wants us to see the pattern of things in our lives that lead us to fall, and learn to trust Him for strength to stay on the rock where He has placed us, so we don't fall again.  But if we do fall, He is there to pull us out again.

We fall far too often, it is true.  Yet we need to trust God's plan for our recovery.  "Being confident of this very thing, that he which has begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ"  (Philippians 1:6).  Like Paul, I pray that we all may be strengthened inwardly by God's Spirit so that Jesus will live in our hearts by faith.  This is the way that we all can understand the love of Christ, which is beyond our understanding.  This is how we can be filled with the fullness of God.  God is able to do much more than we ask Him to, or think He is able to accomplish.  It will be to His glory for us to overcome our inherited and developed tendencies to sin.  (Ephesians 3:16-21)

Just as we encourage and lift up our daughter Miriam when she stumbles, God doesn't give up on us.  Keep rising up-- in God's strength.

Warren