A New Year’s Resolution
Most New Year’s resolutions are about breaking a bad habit. Sin is like a bad habit from which you cannot free yourself. It’s the guilt and shame of the sin, the sin of past mistakes, some very foolish, others unwise and still others go on to destroy life. This is called the sting of death.
These habits are like uninvited guests who travel the pathways of our minds and bodies. We try to compensate for them by proving ourselves innocent in a myriad of ways, one by becoming overly religious and in so doing committing the greater crime of self-righteousness. From birth to birth, generation to generation, these uninvited guests destroy all that we profess and hope to be.
It’s the pleasures of sin that affect a person in the same way an opiate or drug affects the receptors in the brain, giving the victim a momentary relief from the pains of life. In reality, the effects of sin leave one helplessly lying in the gutters of one’s desires, dreams, schemes and machinations.
Sin is the thief of life; Jesus came to restore us to the fullness of life.
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. John 10:10
Because of our very natures, we think of abundance in terms of having all that the world offers. However, the Word of God tells us this. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. Romans 12:2
When we accept Christ, we accept God’s good and perfect will for our lives. When John the Baptist baptized Jesus, a voice from heaven said, This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. Matthew 17:5 God speaks the same to us when we accept His only begotten Son. That is where the life of faith begins–when we become pleasing to God. And the life we are then called into is to live physically, mentally, and emotionally according to the will of God that He has made known to us in His Word.
Therefore, whatever diet you choose to put yourself on in this New Year, be sure that it includes a rich portion of the Word of God. “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.” Colossians 3:2-3
