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Jan 01, 2023

Resolute Rhythms

Preacher: John Repsold

Keywords: plans, blessing, resolutions, rhythms of life

Summary:

This message examines the biblical foundation for making plans or resolutions at any time in life, but especially at the New Year. It also looks at very practical steps to fruitful planning.

Detail:

Resolute Rhythms

2023 New Year’s Day

Intro:  Life is filled with rhythms. 

  • Daily? Light & dark, sunrise/sunset, work/rest, awake/asleep, eat/abstain, inhale/exhale, dress/undress
  • Weekly? Workdays/weekends/days off, meetings/solitude, family night/date night/movie night/
  • Annually? Holidays, vacations, reunions, seasons,

Rhythm =

  • If Andrew were here describing rhythm as a percussionist, he’d say, “A strong, regular, repeated pattern of movement or sound.”
  • If Webster were here, one of the definitions he’d give is “movement, change, or variation marked by the regular recurrence of related elements.”

We just finished a month (December) filled with notable rhythms.  What are some of them? 

  • 1st day of winter,
  • Christmas Eve,
  • Christmas,
  • shopping, gift-giving,
  • short days and long nights,
  • parties & gatherings,
  • Christmas carols,
  • Advent Sundays,
  • seasonal decorating and foods, etc.

We are all subject to various rhythms outside our control (seasons, weather patterns, biological clocks, etc.).  But most of life’s rhythms are things we personally choose or “resolve” to do.

  • When to go to bed or get up.
  • When to eat.
  • When to brush our teeth.
  • When to read or watch TV.

Speaking of resolutions, this is another thing our culture has a rhythm about:  New Year’s Resolutions.  In researching for today’s message, I ran across a few things about New Year’s resolutions that you might enjoy.

  • Someone quipped, “May all your troubles last as long as your New Year’s resolutions.”
  • Sign on shop door on New Year’s Day: “Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving the road to hell with them as usual.”
  • Someone else said, “A New Year’s resolution is something that goes in one year and out the other.”

Since TODAY is actually the first day of our New Year, I thought we could spend some time looking at the role “resolutions” or “plans” can have in our life with God.  Is it even biblical to make resolutions about the future?  Is it just an American cultural phenomenon or can resolving to do certain things have positive results for us in truly important things in life like our relationship with God, friendships, family, work or school?

Before we go any further, it is important to fix in our minds some important things God has to say about planning and our futures.

  1. Making plans is a godly, God-like activity. Seeing them fulfilled is a gracious human-divine partnership. 
    1. Jeremiah 29:10-13—God has plans for His people that span centuries and generations.   10 This is what the Lord says: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place. 11 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. 12 Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. 13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. 

Planning and making plans is something God has given, gifted and delegated to us to do and should flow from the desires of our heart. 

  1. 20:4—David prays a blessing, “May he give you the desire of your heart and make all your plans succeed.”
  2. Isaiah 26:12-- Lord, you establish peace for us; all that we have accomplished you have done for us.
  3. 1 Cor. 15:10— But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. 

Making plans is a godly, God-like activity.  Seeing them fulfilled is a gracious human-divine partnership. 

  1. All plans for Christ-followers must be dependent upon God’s grace and will. Good, successful plans will mirror God’s nature, desires, will and works. 
    1. James 4:13-15—Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.”14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15 Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”  God isn’t against planning; He’s against plans that are made apart from His will for our lives. 
    2. 16:3-4—Commit to the Lord whatever you do and he will establish your plans. 4 The Lord works out everything to its proper end—even the wicked for a day of disaster.

The problem for most of us is not that we don’t make plans; it’s that we make plans all day long but rarely consult the Lord about them.  How different my day is when, first thing in the morning, I look over my calendar of appointments and tasks I want to get done and have a conversation with God about every one of them.  And then I pray about the people and parts of my day that I haven’t planned for and ask God to take charge of them too, to protect my time from empty activities and interruptions.  It’s amazing the difference that makes in how a day or week or year plays out.

  1. Plans should be led of the Spirit. David planning the Temple & Solomon fulfilling those plans.
    1. 1 Chron. 28:11-12—Then David gave his son Solomon the plans for the portico of the temple, its buildings, its storerooms, its upper parts, its inner rooms and the place of atonement.12 He gave him the plans of all that the Spirit had put in his mind for the courts of the temple of the Lord and all the surrounding rooms, for the treasuries of the temple of God and for the treasuries for the dedicated things. 

When we are led of the Spirit in our plans, we can be assured of fruitfulness.

  1. Plans will either be evil or good, meaningful or meaningless, depending on the person making them. They reflect our moral and spiritual character: 
    1. 12:5—The plans of the righteous are just,
      but the advice of the wicked is deceitful.
    2. 32:8—But the noble make noble plans,
      and by noble deeds they stand.
  2. Plans are no substitute for action; action is no substitute for planning.
    1. 21:5—The plans of the diligent lead to profit
      as surely as haste leads to poverty.  Being “diligent” means we work at something persistently and steadily.  Plans without diligence will not produce anything valuable.  But hastily just doing things will also be unproductive.  It will waste both our energies and resources.  When we take time to work on life-plans with God, that combination “leads to profit.”

Resolutions are simply plans that we make because we want to see some positive change happen in our own lives.  We are free to make them any time of the year.  But the rhythm of an annual calendar provides us with periodic times of reflection, observation, analysis, planning and celebration. 

            This was the case with the Israelites, the first “people of God”.  God actually required that the entire nation set aside, not just one day a year to assess, review, analyze, plan and resolve to do things, but multiple.  There were some 19 distinct feast days (Passover, Unleavened Bread, Tabernacles/Booths, Pentecost, Trumpets) plus the weekly Sabbath/Shabbat.  That would be a total of about 70 days a year to celebrate life with reflection, recalibration, rest and refocusing. 

            But we must keep in mind that, while God required these special days, they weren’t meant to be a burden.  Just like the Sabbath itself, they were meant to be a privilege that no other people in the world had.  Setting aside the routine of work to rest, to reflect, to spend time with loved ones and God’s people, to take trips to the Temple to worship God, to take time to drink in His Word and bask in His blessings—this is not what people who don’t know God do. This is what people who delight in God and the people he gives us to share life with do.

For people who do know and love God, these kinds of days are an opportunity to express our faith in God over faith in our ability to work another day.  It’s an opportunity to listen to God instead of always hearing other people.  It’s an opportunity to recalibrate our lives according to God’s desires for us and to wean ourselves from the incessant and slow creep of this world that inevitably soils us unless we take time to search for God’s heart and let God search ours.

PRACTICAL STEPS to EXPERIENCING FRUITFUL RESOLUTIONS

  1. INVITE God to guide your planning. If we want to make plans that will be truly beneficial, truly good, even eternal in impact, God must be leading us in them.  He must inspire our dreams.  He must purify and sift our personal desires to align them with His good will for us. He must be free to point out sin and ignorance in our lives that is leading us to make the wrong plans or try and fulfill the right ones in the wrong ways. 

So fruitful resolutions/plans start, continue with and end in PRAY.  Here’s how you might ask God to do this. 

30 seconds of silence. 

30 seconds of surrender (frustrations, fears, concerns, disappointments, hopes, dreams, etc.). 

  1. IDENTIFY the important areas of our lives where making plans will help us experience greater blessing with God. Start with the most important relationships in your life and work outward.
    1. Relationship with God
    2. Friendships/fellowship
    3. Health/body
    4. Hobbies/fun/entertainment
    5. Intellect/mind
    6. Family (spouse, children, parents, grandchildren)
    7. Career/school/work
    8. Finances
    9. Service/volunteering
  2. ENVISION/DREAM what it could look like to grow in each of these areas of life. Green-light as many things as come to mind under each category. 

Once you have the goal/desire/dream written down, ask God what He thinks.  Is this something He longs for in my life?  Is this something He will be working hard to assist me with?  ILL: 

  • Finances: is this the year you want me to take another job…or more hours of work so I can move into a different apartment?  OR is this the year you want me to actually develop the practice of giving away by faith 10/12/15/25% of what I already have…my income…to different ministries?
  • My mind/intellect: is this idea I have to spend one evening a week reading a book rather than watching another TV program Your idea, God?  Or do you want me to spend 5 minutes/day memorizing Scripture instead of surfing the internet? 
  • Friendships/fellowship: is this the year You want me to schedule in a monthly lunch with 2 friends I value and with whom I want to have deeper relationship?  OR is this the year you want me to open my home for a small group Bible study and fellowship night?
  • Relationship with God: Lord, what one thing would significantly improve my connection with you this year? 

Obviously, this step will take a little bit of time, perhaps several hours…maybe even several days of mulling it over.  But what BETTER do we have to do with God’s gift of TIME over the next week?  Watch another mindless show…or 4 or 5?  Work another 10 hours to make another $300? 

[Take 3 minutes to begin this process.]

  1. PRIORITIZE the order in which you are going to tackle these important “resolutions.” Don’t try to do them all at once.  Just try to do 1 a month!  PRAY and ask God to show you which of these areas will make the most difference to your life and the people around you? 

--Maybe God will tell you, “John, you have to take better care of yourself.  If you don’t, it’s going to negatively affect everything else you want to do with those you love this year.  So, John, start taking a 30-minute walk with Me 3 times a week…and stop drinking more than 1 cup of coffee a day.”  I’m going to need God’s help to do that for a full month…or 3 months. 

Then, maybe, just maybe, I can move on to that monthly long lunch with my wife where we talk about how our souls are doing—what’s renewing us, what’s challenging us, what’s disappointing us, what we’re praying for, etc.

      The order of these resolutions may shuffle as I work through them this year under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  But if I don’t have them down in black-and-white where I’m going to see them at least every week, they’ll be just nice ideas and paving stones on the road to hell!  

  1. Practice ACCOUNTABILITY with yourself and others. Unless someone is going to ask me about my resolutions on some regular basis, 95% of us will make no change to our patterns and routines.  But if I’m serious about growing…if I really want to see the changes… I will want someone better disciplined than me to be regularly checking in with me about it. 
    1. Don’t ask your spouse to do that…unless you really like being nagged! That dynamic usually doesn’t help any of us.
    2. IF you go a month without any change in the selected resolution, either admit it isn’t that important to you and move on to one that might actually be more important OR spend time asking God for help, asking Him to show you what motivation will move you to grow or what obstacle is regularly keeping you from growing into this resolution.

Exercise:  after each resolution write the name of someone you are going to ask to help you with it.  (For me it may be another staff pastor…or the men in my weekly accountability group…or a friend I have breakfast with every-other-week.)

Sabbaths are a great time to engage in self-accountability—looking back over the week, the resolutions, and assessing how we did. 

  1. SCHEDULE your Resolutions/Rhythms

[See weekly schedule.]

Example: 

  • Family/date/friendship night (Thursday)
  • 30 minutes of exercise (Mon, Wed, Sat.)
  • Reading night (Tues.)
  • Journaling Bible reading or thoughts (3-times/wk.)
  • 10-minutes of prayer, 5 minutes of listening for God (mornings, 6 days/wk)
  1. REVIEW & ADJUST

The nature of life is such that it demands constant adjustment.  New things come in that demand our time in ways we hadn’t planned.  Our health changes.  Our living situation changes.  Our finances change.  Here again is where periodic review will be helpful:  Weekly during my sabbath; quarterly and annually.

Even the best plans and resolutions we make may need adjustments. 

EX:  Perhaps we were overly ambitious, setting out to read the Bible for ½ hour/day.  But 1 month into it, we’re tempted to stop altogether because we’ve only been able to do a ½ hour 2 or 3 times a week.  Maybe we need to start with 10 or 15 minutes consistently for 2-3 months before shooting for ½ hour?

1 Timothy 4:7-10

7 Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself [goom-nad'-zo] for godliness; 8 for while bodily training [goom-nas-ee'-ah] is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. 9 The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance. 10 For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.

“train yourself” or “discipline yourself” = Gk: goom-nadzo.  Used of exercising either body or mind.  Used of gymnastic training.

Found also in:

  • Hebrews 5:14--But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.
  • Hebrews 12:11--For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

Training and discipline that resolutions can produce is not legalism; it’s the means by which growth takes place in our lives.  We live in a culture that applauds discipline in athletes, in the workplace and in education.  It is a lie of the enemy of our souls to try and trick us into thinking that discipline in our spiritual lives is something negative.  It isn’t!  It’s godly!

            So let’s embrace the privilege we have of resolving, under the direction of the Holy Spirit and sovereignty of God the Father, to create a better, more God-glorifying future in 2023.  Take time today and tomorrow (most of us have it ‘off’ as a holiday) to chart a year of growth and God-glorifying decisions and disciplines. 

PRAY

Explain the handouts available at the back tables. 

 

EXPERIENCING FRUITFUL RESOLUTIONS

 

Keep in mind the following biblical truths about resolutions and life-change:

 

  1. Making plans is a __________________, God-like activity. Seeing them fulfilled is a gracious _________________-divine partnership.

 

  1. All plans for Christ-followers must be dependent upon God’s grace and                     .

 

  1. Plans should be                                of the Holy Spirit.

 

  1. Plans will either be evil or good. They reflect our ______________________ and spiritual character.

 

  1. Plans are no __________________________ for action. Action is not substitute for                                                      .

 

Practical Steps

  1. Invite God to ___________________ your planning.
  2. IDENTIFY the important _________________ of your life where making plans will help you experience greater blessing with God.
    1. Relationship with God
    2. Friendships/fellowship
    3. Health/body
    4. Hobbies/fun/entertainment
    5. Intellect/mind
    6. Family (spouse, children, parents, grandchildren)
    7. Career/school/work
    8. Finances
    9. Service/volunteering

 

  1. ________________________________________ what growth would look like in each of these areas.
  2. PRIORITIZE the ________________________ in which you think God would have you tackle them.
  3. Practice accountability with _______________________ and others.
  4. Schedule your resolutions and rhythms.

 

 

 

 

  1. _______________________ and adjust.

YEAR-END/NEW YEAR ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS

 

Personal Assessment Questions:

  1. What did I do regularly this past year that fed me spiritually?
  2. What did I do this past year that distracted, discouraged or kept me from positive growth?
  3. In what ways did I see God working in my life this past year?
  4. How’s my time with God on a daily basis? Consistent or inconsistent?  Meaningful or empty/unmemorable?  What are the barriers to consistency and meaningfulness in my time with God?  What could I do this year to improve both? 
  5. How well did I steward my body and health this past year? What positive changes would I like to make this next year to grow in my stewardship?
  6. How well did I steward the other resources God has given me of
    1. time
    2. money
    3. relationships
    4. opportunities
    5. other
  7. What were my greatest challenges or frustrations this past year? What can I do with God and others that will improve them this next year? 

 

Spouse/Marriage Questions:

  1. What were the best memories that we made together this year as a couple?
  2. What were the best memories that we made together this year as a family?
  3. What would you consider the key challenges we faced as a family this past year? With each child? In our marriage?
  4. If someone were to ask you, “Describe your current marriage relationship,” what would you say and why?
  5. If you could change anything about last year, what would it be and why?
  6. Based on the experiences that we have had as a couple and as a family, what have you learned about God and His work in our lives?
  7. What are 3 trips or activities that you would enjoy doing together this next year?
  8. What is one thing you would like us to share on a regular basis this next year?
  9. What do I do that ministers to you and you would love it if I did it more?
  10. What are your top fears/concerns for your life? For ach of our children?

Kid Questions:

  1. What’s your favorite day of the week and why?
  2. What have been some of the best times you have had with me this past year? 
  3. If you had to give me some advice on being a better parent, what would it be and why?
  4. What are some things that you would like to talk with me about and why?
  5. What are some of your fears/concerns that you would like me to pray for you about?
  6. What is something that you would like to do with me on a regular basis?  As a special event?
  7. How can I help you grow to love God more? What do I do now that helps you know God better?
  8. How do you think you have changed and grown this past year?
  9. What activity would you like to do this next year that you haven’t done yet? Which activities do you want to continue to do?