There is something cleansing about the month of January. Opening a new calendar, staring at all the blank boxes filled with promise and unseen opportunities, feeling the exhilarating rush of anticipation at all that can be accomplished in a NEW year, one is often tempted to set goals, list expectations and begin the process of completing those tasks.
Then comes the month of February. Many of January's promises and commitments have been tossed aside, written off as the overworked imagination of fancy. The one or two items still on the list are often given half-hearted attempts at completion - more to keep from admitting total failure than to actually accomplish the goal. Maybe February is too late; perhaps the items on the list were abandoned in mid-January.
Is all lost?
No.
But it all needs to be restarted. That's right, totally stopped, rethought, reworked and then restarted. So take your list of "resolutions" and put them down
and
just
walk
away.
The fact of the matter is that you will never keep them anyway. Your own strength is far to feeble to accomplish anything of value. This is a job for not super-human strength, but for superior to super-human strength. The goals you would like to set for your life need to be filtered through the sieve of God's thinking.
Try it! Does God want you to [here's where you fill in the blank with what you want to accomplish this year]? How will that make you more like Jesus Christ? How will that influence others to desire a relationship with Him? Face it; God probably does not want you to quit your job to go to all 162 baseball games of your favorite team. He may not even desire for you to go to the gym 6 days a week. Get His perspective on your resolutions - then revise them accordingly!
Now you are ready to restart! "But," I can hear you say "this list looks so hard!" It may very well be the most difficult task you have ever faced! That is exactly why you were never meant to accomplish it on your own. Ask God for His divine help, strength, guidance and direction. Enlist others to hold you accountable, pray for you, rejoice at your progress and weep at your setbacks. Don't expect everything to happen overnight. The only things that happen overnight are FedEx deliveries; and, unless you work for FedEx, God doesn't expect you to deliver FedEx results!
This is a new year. There are still 354 days left to accomplish great things. Ask God to determine what great things He would like for you to accomplish this year; and then ask His help as you move toward accomplishing them.
