Calling All New Year’s Resolution Tragics!
Nov 23, 2016 1726
Are you a “new year’s resolution tragic?” Are you sick and tired of making new year’s resolutions that you always seem unable to fulfil? If you’re like me, you gave up on them a long time ago. What’s the point of making resolutions that you never keep? It just increases the disappointment, doesn’t it?
I think Jesus’ friend Peter knew all about making resolutions for personal improvement. Remember the time he walked on water, but then he took his eyes off Jesus, and sank until Jesus rescued him? I’m sure promised himself that he would never take his eyes off Jesus again.
Remember when Peter argued with Jesus, trying to convince him not to go to Jerusalem, where danger awaited him? Jesus said to him, “Get behind me, Satan!” I’m almost certain Peter promised himself not to confront Jesus like that again.
Remember when Peter denied Christ three times on the night he was betrayed? And then the cock crowed, just as Jesus had said? I’m sure Peter promised himself that night, in the bitterness of his shame, that he would never show his face to the other disciples again (Not all of the resolutions we make are the right ones!)
But Peter, like me, wasn’t very good at keeping his resolutions, or at doing new things with his life. Like Peter, we always seem to be stuck in the “same-old, same-old.” But what it wasn’t us who are meant to do new things in our lives, but God?
God is a specialist in making things new
It was only when Peter realized how Jesus Christ had done an entirely new thing, that Peter was motivated by love to allow Christ to change his life. Jesus had totally overturned the power of death by rising from the grave. But perhaps even more importantly for Peter, he discovered saw a love that he had never understood before. He had betrayed his Lord, even to the cross, and yet Jesus still loved him.
God is the specialist in making things new. Think about time. Time is something that is totally out of humanity’s control Only God controls time. Time never repeats itself. Every second, every minute, every day, every week and every month comes to us fresh from the hand of God!
This new year into which we are entering is a brand-new year, created for you by the One who not only loves making things new, but who is also the only being in the universe who can authentically make old things new again. We can’t do it through our resolutions, but God can do it through his word. Let’s just believe more, and trust and love him more! – Eliezer Gonzalez
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