I sat there thinking, what will make this year different? If you are anything like me, you set these great goals but don't end up staying with it the whole year. Then, you screw up one time and get down on yourself. The Lord graciously challenged me not to make these surface level things my resolutions but to look at the core of the motives behind the them.
Then it hit me, the core is to know Jesus better.
"For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith-that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and may share His sufferings..." -Philippians 3:8-10
The more I know Jesus, the more I will love Him.
The more I learn about His character, the more I am in absolute awe of the God we serve. I couldn't think of anything else worth giving my life to. I want to learn more and more about His character this year. I want to dive into the Bible and not only read about Him, but study some of His character traits. We often throw around these traits like sovereign, omniscient, pure, holy, and others but do we truly know the depths of these meanings and not just a surface definition? The more I have learned about Him the more I have loved Him throughout my life.
"And He said to him, 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'"Matthew 22:37
This verse gets quoted a lot but this year I want to study it and really understand the depths of this kind of love in this verse.
The more I love Him, the more I will want to take care of my body and treasure the people I am around.
For me personally, the more I love Him the more I will appreciate the body He has given me and will treat it like a temple. Instead of dreading going for a run, it will be a way I can show appreciation for what the Lord has given me and show appreciation for the fact that I have the ability to get up and go run. The more I love Him, the more I will want to eat the foods He created for us to eat. Eating very healthy will become more of a joy because it will be a way for me to show appreciation for what He has given us to eat. How often are we truly thankful for the beautiful natural foods He has prepared for us? I don't know about you, but I'm not nearly as thankful and appreciative as I should be. Don't get me wrong, I don't think it's bad to eat a good chunk of brownie (If this was true then I would have been struck by lighting way too many times.....). God created sugar and wants us to enjoy it, but I believe it is to be enjoyed in moderation.
The more I love God, the more I want to treasure the wonderful friends He has placed in my life. The more I treasure them, the more gospel-based our friendships are and the deeper the conversations. I would love to be better about writing letters to friends this year so that it shows I treasure them enough to go out of my way to write something and send it through the mail to them. That's one thing I would love to bring back from childhood. Also, the more I love God the more I want to serve my roommates and friends and serve them without expecting anything in return. I want to serve them as a picture of how Christ serves us. We worship a God who was worthy of praise but came to earth not to be served, but to serve (Matt 20:28).
Please don't get me wrong, I am not saying it's wrong to have great resolutions like losing weight, eating better, and working out. This is just something the Lord was challenging me with and I wanted to use it to encourage you all and also to have accountability on my part. I would love for you to ask throughout the year what I have learned about God and how I know him more. Even if you aren't close friends with me it would mean the world to have people around asking me that question. Not only would I love the accountability, but I would love to share what I'm learning about Him.
Here's the funny thing...I am so incredibly broken and sinful that I can't even know and love Him on my own. I have to humbly ask for the desire to truly know Him. I have to ask for the diligence to not only be in the word, but to study it. I have to ask the Lord to graciously open my eyes and remove my self-love. This righteousness does not come from myself or my resolutions, it comes from faith in Jesus and His power.
After all of this had been going through my head, I went to church this morning to hear a phenomenal sermon about numbering our days. My pastor, Rodney, mentioned that according to Psalm 90 we will not be able to number our days until we truly understand the nature of God, the nature of man, and the problem of sin. I want to remember how fleeting my life is and realize I am but a vapor. Why? Because at the end of my life I don't want to look back at all the things I accomplished for nothing. I want to deeply know Jesus. I want to deeply know Jesus so I can passionately love Him and love others.
"Your sweep them away as with a flood; they are like a dream, like grass that is renewed in the morning: in the morning it flourishes and is renewed; in the evening it fades and withers."
Psalm 90:5-6
"The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever."Isaiah 40:8
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