At this time of the year resolutions are a hot topic. Depending on when you get your newsletter, you may be planning some New Year’s resolutions, or you may have already broken some. Resolutions seem to work well for a few people but most people struggle to keep them (Otherwise we would all look like the guys on the Bowflex® commercials.) If you are a fellow struggler, I’m going to recommend that you try something a little different this year.

 

There is nothing wrong with most resolutions themselves. I’ve never heard of anyone resolving bad things like “I’m going to be more hateful and selfish than ever before,” or “This year I’m going to cut my devotional life in half!” Most people resolve to do things that will make them better people. So it’s not that we have bad goals, we just have a bad way of trying to achieve them. Our resolutions fail because our resolve fails.

 

 It is interesting that we all enter the Christian life by God’s grace, but somehow we seem to think we can live it by our own willpower. The Apostle points out in Romans 7:15 and following that willpower often lets us down: “For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do.” So if we can’t succeed at true life change by will power alone, what can we depend upon? The power of God’s Spirit! The Spirit of God can accomplish what we could never hope to achieve.

 

This doesn’t mean, however that we are free from all responsibility for our Christian growth. In Romans 12:1 we learn that we are to offer our bodies to Christ for His service. Then in verse two we learn that we are to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. God’s power works through His word. That’s what it means for the truth to “Set you free.” So here is goal I recommend for 2010: Instead of depending on your willpower, rely on the power of God’s Spirit. That transforming power will be unleashed one verse at a time as you fill your heart and mind with the truth of God’s word.