Let’s face it.
New Year’s resolutions don’t work.
One study says only 8% of Americans actually achieve their resolutions. This 8% must have either worked their tails off, or happened upon chance. The problem is often not the place that people want to see change in their lives (most of us actually do need to exercise or steward our money better), but where they place their hope for the change they seek.
As Christians we tend to turn to the same false hopes as the world does. I know I have.
I remember one year I decided to be like Jesus, rise before dawn and spend some time reading the Bible and in prayer. The first morning I knew I was already in for disaster—I got home from band practice late the night before and at 5 a.m. I stumbled out of bed to the living room. I kneeled as I began to pray and woke up with my face in the ottoman two hours later. Somehow I hadn’t turned into the embodiment of Christ overnight. In the course of the next few weeks I found and set aside a more reasonable time to be with the Lord, taking into consideration our infant son’s sleep and my weird work schedule. Though my prayer list was printed out and I brought my analog bible, I spent the majority of my godly hour on Twitter and Instagram until I had to rush off to a work meeting. I quickly realized achieving my goal wasn’t just a matter of selecting the right time, but also needing a change that I was powerless to make on my own.
Resolution or no, eventually our actions will reveal what our heart is and show us we are in need of a savior, not a new year. This is the question we should ask ourselves on New Year’s: “Where do I place my hope for lasting change?”
To help you answer this question, here are three things a new year can’t do for you, but Christ can.
1. Change
Sorry to state the obvious, but a new year is powerless in your life. The only thing it has the power to do is change some digits on your calendar. But we’re led to believe we can magically take hold of some special voodoo simply because 2013 turned to 2014. We don’t need the date to change, we need the Lord to work a miracle and change us.
2. Hope
“There’s always next year!” We may never go so far as to make this statement, but boy do our actions reveal that we want to believe it. We are desperate for hope. We long for some kind of assurance that things will improve, when the truth is that Christ is our only hope. He is unchanging, perfectly loving, and reliable. “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” What we really lack is the faith that our hope in God’s goodness and power is real and trustworthy.
3. New beginnings
Yes, a new year is new. The problem is that the newness we experience temporally is small and fleeting when compared to the everlasting newness available to us in Christ. Ecclesiastes 7:8 says, “Better is the end of a thing than its beginning.” It’s not so much that the beginning is bad, but that the Lord places a greater value on our last day. He wants us to persevere with him; he wants all of our days, not just the first.
Christian, in the new year don’t forget that grace is a gift not only for salvation, but for your sanctification. You may have unwrapped the free gift of salvation and now you’re sitting and staring at the package, waiting for its contents to jump out at you. Should you set goals and make resolutions? Absolutely. But do so by taking hold of Jesus’ endless, inexhaustible grace and power, dependent on his faithfulness to see you through to completion.
