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Jan 04, 2015

Resolution Time

Passage: Philippians 3:12-14

Preacher: John Repsold

Category: Holiday

Keywords: resolutions, review, new year

Summary:

This message looks at the biblical support for regular resolutions and goals in life and examines how they can actually help us grow in Christ.

Detail:

Renewed Resolutions

January 4, 2015

 

Welcome to 2015! Has anyone actually started any of your New Year’s resolutions yet? How many have already decided to drop them? J

While the New Years is just another day on the calendar, the passing of time is something God has designed into human experience for a reason. And as much as science fiction likes to play around with the notion of time-travel, the reality for every human being is that we have a finite amount of time to live on this earth, to develop meaningful human relationships, to fight for goodness and truth, and to experience God in this phase of our humanness.

Most of us want to make the most of our years. Who starts a new year with resolutions like…

  • I resolve to make a real mess of my life this year…by learning 5 new self-destructive behaviors…OR
  • Resolved: to waste as much money as possible and be totally destitute in 30 days.

Thankfully, we all nurture hopes and dreams for our lives. We all want our life to keep improving, even if we may be mistaken about what improvements are actually best for us.

            So when the New Year rolls around, even if just for a fleeting moment, most of us like to look back and see what we’ve learned and look forward to what we still hope to grow into.

When I think of resolutions, I can’t help but think of one of America’s outstanding spiritual leaders of the 18th century, Jonathan Edwards. By age 18 he had graduated from Yale University with both a bachelors and a masters degree. He was pastoring a small split off of a Presbyterian church in New York City, then a city of about 10,000 people, not the 8.5 million it is today. Over the course of his 18th and 19th year of life, he wrote the bulk of some 65 “resolutions” that he used to guide his life.

            Perhaps one of the reasons his resolutions actually did shape his life is that he read them through once a week minimum. Maybe that’s where the rest of us should start our resolutions—resolving to read whatever resolutions we’ve made at least once a week!

            But back to Edwards. His 60+ resolutions covered everything from his life mission to relationships, character, spiritual life and time management. In fact, let me read a few of them to you so you get the drift of the kind of life Edwards resolved to lead.

#7. Resolved, never to do anything, which I should be afraid to do, if it were the last hour of my life.

#37. Resolved, to inquire every night, as I am going to bed, wherein I have been negligent, what sin I have committed, and wherein I have denied myself: also at the end of every week, month and year.

When it came to being kind and generous to others, this is what #13 said: Resolved, to be endeavoring to find out fit objects of charity and liberality.

#40 had to do with his health: Resolved, to inquire every night, before I go to bed, whether I have acted in the best way I possibly could with respect to eating and drinking. (He made that one on Jan. 7, 1723…maybe after eating too much during the Christmas season?)

#33 had to do with keeping peace with others: Resolved, always to do what I can towards making, maintaining, establishing and preserving peace, when it can be without over-balancing detriment in other respects.

About suffering #10 says, “Resolved, when I feel pain, to think of the pains of martyrdom, and of hell.”

#21. Resolved, never to do anything, which if I should see in another, I should count a just occasion to despise him for, or to think any way the more meanly of him.

#25 said, “Resolved, to examine carefully, and constantly, what that one thing in me is, which causes me in the least to doubt of the love of God; and to direct all my forces against it.

Not all his resolutions are necessarily what we might want to emulate. #38 said, “Resolved, never to speak anything that is ridiculous, sportive, or matter of laughter on the Lord’s day.” (I actually pray for a better sense of humor in my preaching! J)

#56. Resolved, never to give over, nor in the least to slacken my fight with my corruptions, however unsuccessful I may be.

            Edwards even resolved things about his emotional state: #45. Resolved never to allow any pleasure or grief, joy or sorrow, nor any affection at all, nor any degree of affection, nor any circumstance relating to it, but what helps religion [his spiritual life/life with Christ].

Perhaps it is time to reclaim the practice of making a few resolutions, reviewing them weekly and seeking, by the Holy Spirit, to order our lives by them. Spiritual resolutions are not some self-help program. Edwards himself, at the beginning of his Resolutions, wrote this:

Being sensible that I am unable to do anything without God’s help, I do humbly entreat Him by His grace to enable me to keep these Resolutions, so far as they are agreeable to his will, for Christ’s sake.

When it comes to looking back over any part of our lives, the Bible actually has a few things to say to us.

First, there are some things we are NOT to spend our energies mulling over. Put positively, there are some things we are to “forget”. Most of God’s commands about forgetting have to do with not forgetting certain things. We may get to that in a moment.

            According to Scripture, both Old and New Testaments, there is one consistent thing God chooses NOT to remember…and I’m so he does. God chooses not to mull over or bring to mind OUR SIN.

  • Jeremiah 31:33f--For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”

The writer of Hebrews quotes this very verse in two separate chapters (8 & 10) to support his argument that the work of Jesus Christ has brought us this very thing, this very relationship with God the Father.

  • Hebrews 8:12 says it this way, “For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.”

While God may call us to recognize our sin, he never asks us to dwell on it. Why would He ask us to do something he has chosen not to do? So if we want to grow up in Christ, if we want to experience more of the life of Christ in our lives, sitting around bemoaning our sin or groveling in it is NOT how we’re going to be able to enjoy God or life more.

ILL: A couple of years ago, David and I were invited by a friend of mine to drive one of his two high performance cars down to Portland and take part in an Audi high speed driving school that included track time on the Portland International Raceway. In short, we were taught how to drive fast without wrecking some very expensive cars.

            One of the fundamental principles they taught us in high speed driving is to look beyond the turn, not AT the turn. Because we tend to be drawn to the things we focus on, if you focus on the turn rather than looking past the turn at your next apex point, you will tend to go for the corner rather than choosing the best line through the corners.

            Let me show you what it looks like through the windshield. [See YouTube video at Portland International Raceway at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2e650MFJ0Q, 2:00-2:50.]

That’s way too much fun to be legal! It’s actually probably one of the few times I’ve gotten behind the wheel of a car and not broken the speed limit!

            But here’s the point: when it comes to focus, we’re not to be all about our mess-ups and sins; we’re to be all about what we learned from those experiences and more importantly on the next decision point we’re going to be going through in our day or week or life that lifts our eyes to Christ, that “perfect line” of life that will lead us to the best run of our lives.

There is a ditch on each side of this road of life that we should avoid. On one side is the ditch of defeat that focuses our attentions on past defeats and where we have failed. But there is an equally dangerous ditch on the other side of this road—the ditch of denial. That ditch refuses to acknowledge our own sin, our own part in problems or relationships or life issues. Failure to learn from our mistakes simply condemns us to repeating them over and over and over again.

After each time out on the track at the Portland Raceway, we would come off the track and immediately debrief, and I mean immediately. We would sit in the staging area, motor running, brakes cooling down, and the instructor would give us feedback about what we did right and what we did wrong. It wasn’t a negative time; it was a learning time. And then we’d change seats. The instructor would get in the driver’s seat and we’d hop in the passenger side. And that’s when you would get to feel what doing it better was like! And believe me, you felt it in everything from your shoulder harness to your stomach.

So, learn from our sins, YES. Live under them, NO! Now there is a good life-long resolution if you want to start your own list.

This is essentially what James is telling us in James 1:22-24 when he says, “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. 23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. 24 For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. 25 But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.”

            We are to look often, look intently, and look long…perseveringly…into God’s word, His perfect law. In doing so, we will get an accurate understanding of where our hair is messed up, where we need to wash our face or shave or correct something in ourselves that is out of place and ugly to behold. Letting the word of God point those things out to us and then doing something about it…doing the godly thing about it…is the right thing to do with personal faults and failings.

This is why time before the mirror of God’s word regularly, frequently and significantly is absolutely vital for growing up in Christ. BUT simply exposing ourselves to the word does no good at all unless it translates into ACTION. And action happens when we resolve in our mind to DO something in our behavior. Ah, we’re back to RESOLUTIONS! J

Let me illustrate how this might look in your life by letting you in on how it looked recently for us as Mosaic leaders. Many of you know that for the past 3 years, we’ve been helping a brother from Mosaic work out his passion and vision for developing a ministry in Cambodia. Mark is one of our own and for the past 3 years, we along with various other people helped Mark get going in business in that spiritually desperately needy country that is also very needy economically and many other ways.

            Well, just recently, the funding and business partnership Mark had found and entered into there in Cambodia fell apart. The business had to be liquidated and Mark has returned to the U.S. to sort things out, work a steady job for someone else and figure out what the next step will be in his life.

            So since Mosaic was Mark’s sending church and since we invested about $25,000 in that ministry over the past 3 years, we’ve needed to do some prayerful, honest, hopefully Spirit-led “looking back” so that we can do better looking forward. Our Ministry Leadership Team has gotten input from other missionaries there on the field close to the situation as well as heard from Mark. And now we’re trying to learn all we can from this disappointing development so that we can be more effective moving forward.

            So I’ve asked one of our MLT members, John S., to share with us all some of the “lessons learned/learning” that we’ve distilled out of this over the past few months.

[Invite John to share.]

As John said, this has not been a waist or disaster in any means. There was no moral or ethical failure on Mark’s part. There was a business failure, not something that is uncommon in the best of business start-ups. And since this was a “business-as-mission” venture, the mission part disappeared when the business part failed.

            Since Mark was able to line up a steady job in Texas prior to his return, that is where he currently is. But we look forward to seeing him up here again just as soon as he’s able to get his financial legs under himself and get a little time off for a visit.

Certainly we are all disappointed that things did not turn out as we had all hoped and envisioned they would in this one ministry. It’s one of the bigger disappointments I have to look back on in 2014.

But there was still blessing in it for many people. Mark grew a ton through this experience. Many Cambodians were blessed by employment and his encouragement over the past 3 years. A workable, low-cost fish pond filtration system was developed that is being picked up by others in Cambodia. Several of you got some great short-term cross-cultural and business-as-mission experience with Mark during these past three years. And all of it was done at just about the lowest cost I have personally seen any short-term or career missionary live and work overseas.

But we had things to learn. And those lessons actually come at a very important time for us as we are now considering launching several different low-cost business-as-ministry ventures right here in downtown Spokane in our new facility, Lord willing.

APP: So, let’s bring this home to each of our lives personally. Looking back, has there been a setback, even a sin, or maybe just a disappointment, something this past year that the Holy Spirit is nudging you to look at and learn from? It could be in any area of life. Here are a few of the more important ones that might help you identify what is worth your time assessing.

  • Marriage
  • Family relationships—parents, siblings, children, relatives, in-laws…out-laws. J
  • Friendships
  • Financial life
  • Work/business life
  • Neighborhood relationships
  • Walk with God
  • Life with God’s people
  • Serving other people
  • Physical health
  • Mental & emotional health
  • Hobbies & Entertainment
  • Intellectual growth
  • Stewardship of time
  • Etc.

If we only do this sort of personal inventory once a year, chances are it’s not going to make much if any difference. That is why God gave us the Sabbath—one day in seven for slowing down, resting up, communing with God more, reflecting back on the week and looking forward, charting how we plan to live the next week. The day of the week doesn’t really matter but the fact of whether we do or don’t take time for some assessment and reassessment does.

Here is also where the fellowship of the saints can be so helpful. Just as none of us has all the insight and wisdom needed for any group challenge, so none of us has all the perspective or insight needed for personal challenges. If we’re not in honest, transparent and consistent relationship with people who can give us good, wise, balanced feedback about our life, we probably won’t be doing much useful inventory of our life from time to time. So find yourself a few trusted people. Develop your own “wisdom group”. Get the feedback that will bless and build you in Christ.

Now let’s look the other direction—towards the near future, this next year.

            Some Christian authors say that making plans and setting goals is a purely human exercise, not one that Christians are to be engaged in. I’m not sure what Scripture they base that upon. James does say in James 4:13ff that when we talk about the future we shouldn’t boast about our plans but instead should verbalize our dependence upon God in the plans we have made about the future.

13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit”; 14 whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.” 16 But now you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.

            But in this very passage, he reminds us that life is a fleeting vapor that passes all-too-quickly. In the midst of criticizing merely human get-rich plans, James actually endorses plans that involve God and discerning His will in future desires.

Paul weds the issues of past accomplishments and future goals in Philippians 3. In the first part of this chapter he’s given a long list of what most Jewish people would have held up as a pretty impressive list of accomplishments in life. But he lets them know he now considers all those accomplishments on a par with the morning trash. He says in 3:8,

8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

            One thing and one thing alone has now captivated his vision. Life is all about knowing Christ and making him known. Whether that means experiencing the power of God that raised Jesus from the dead in miraculous experiences with God OR whether it means experiencing the other end of the spectrum—the fellowship of suffering as Christ did to accomplish the Father’s will—Paul understands that the only thing that really matters is growing in His experience of Jesus.

            Here’s how the NIV puts this passage: Philippians 3--

12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13 Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

            As you can see from the English translation here, Paul uses a lot of athletic imagery and language. Every runner knows that in the midst of the race, you don’t look back. In the race, all your energies and field of vision must be facing forward, straining and driving and pushing to the tape.

            That “tape” which Paul “pressed on” to grab hold of (vs. 12 & 14), according to vs. 12, is the very reason God took hold of him and takes hold of every one of us—for the glory of God. What will show God off most in this race of life? What will display his glory, his nature and character most in a world at war with God? We, followers of Jesus Christ, live and breathe, do miracles and suffer, share the Gospel of Christ and express the love of God in this world with ONE OBJECTIVE: to see the greatness and glory of God displayed through our brief lives.

            There is an interesting word that is used 3 times in this passage. It’s translated “take/took hold” in vss. 12 and 13. It is an intensified word that means to apprehend or seize something after a pursuit. It is used of a demon seizing a boy and throwing him to the ground (Mark 9:18).

If a policeman chased a robber and apprehended him, he would have a firm grip on the man, so as not to let him get away. Paul says that the reason he runs in this race is because Jesus Christ chased him down, seized him, and put him in the race. Paul had been in the business of “taking hold of” of seizing Christians and dragging them off to prison or death. But then God grabbed Him, seized Him and took hold of him. And when you’ve known the power of God grabbing hold of you, you have a pretty good idea of the force and power with which He’s calling you to grab hold of Him for the rest of life’s race.

So how do you plan to “press toward the goal” of grabbing onto God this next year?

Running winning races involves discipline. There are no short cuts to being a great athlete. Growing strong in Christ is no different.

While being grabbed by God and put into His race of life is His work, the training and the conditioning and the running of this race will require a lot of work on our part. It must permeate every area of our life. It must dominate every decision, every choice. When you’re training to win, it takes planning. It requires focus. It demands tough decisions. Winning athletes don’t live distracted lives. If they do, they don’t get the prize they are after.

Let’s be honest. All of us wish life were easier. All of us wish success didn’t demand so much. All of us wish there were an easier road to spiritual maturity too. We like the miraculous times; we don’t like the hard, suffering times. But they all form the race to live a God-glorify life.

So considering where you are today on your spiritual journey, what “resolutions” would take you to the next level this year? What steps of faith and what spiritual practices will help you to run this next lap of life in Christ just a little bit better?

            Fact is, none of us will make changes, particularly changes that take work, unless there is that internal drive to do so. It’s probably safe to say that all of us could benefit from more spiritual passion to pursue Christ. So that should probably be our first and most consistent prayer: “God, please grant me growing spiritual passion to pursue You and your glory.” Can you imagine what might happen in our family, in our church, in this city if God answered that prayer more and more each day for the next 365 days! Let’s make that our 2015 prayer.

            My experience tells me that God usually fills my cup of passion for Him when I actually take the time and do the work that gives Him a cup to work with. Pick your metaphor—cup, bowl, soil, field, table, talents…God asks us to prepare for what He can pour out.

So I’d like us to conclude with a question that can be applied to just about any arena of our life: What 1 thing will I do this next year in this area of my life that God could use to help people see His glory? Then choose 4 or 5 areas of your life to start with and apply that question to.

  • What one thing will I do in my marriage that God can use to help my marriage show God off more?
  • What one thing will I do with my mind that God can use to show more of himself to me and those around me?
  • What one thing will I do in my church that God can use to show more of himself to me and those around me?

You can do that with every major area of your life, every major area of relationships and of personal development…pretty much the list we made when talking about areas where we may have messed up or been disappointed this past year.

Look at that list again:

  • Marriage
  • Family relationships—parents, siblings, children, relatives, in-laws…out-laws. J
  • Friendships
  • Financial life
  • Work/business life
  • Neighborhood relationships
  • Walk with God
  • Life with God’s people
  • Serving other people
  • Physical health
  • Mental & emotional health
  • Hobbies & Entertainment
  • Intellectual growth
  • Stewardship of time

Don’t choose them all. Choose 4 or 5 that the Spirit of God impresses on you to tackle. Write them down. Be specific and action-oriented. And then review those godly goals weekly. I guarantee you life will be different, deeper and more God-directed 52 weeks from now if you do. But YOU will have to do it. No one else can do it for you. But God will gladly coach you every week of the year. He’s already chosen you for the team. Keep choosing Him as your coach.

 

ILL: Dr. Howard Hendricks of Dallas Seminary tells about an elderly Christian woman he knew who would come into a social gathering, where everyone was chit-chatting about nothing significant, and say, “Tell me, Howie, what are the five best books you’ve read this past year?” Even though she was up in years, she was on the hunt for books that would keep her growing.

When she died in her nineties, her daughter discovered on her desk that the night before she died in her sleep, she had written out her personal goals for the next five years! That’s someone who is pushing to the finish line!  [cited at https://bible.org/seriespage/lesson-19-christian-growth-process-philippians-312-16]

So take 60 seconds, ask God to put before you 5 areas of your life He wants you to “resolve” to do something in for the next year, and then take some time TODAY, before you put your head on the pillow, to chart out just HOW you would like to work that into your daily spiritual training under His leadership. Tell someone you see regularly about that. Ask them to ask you about it next week…and next month…and in 6 months. And just watch how God will use your resolutions to accomplish His amazing purposes.

Questions for further consideration:

1.)    God calls us to “forget” or leave behind certain things of the past. According to Isaiah 43:16-21 & Philippians 3:13, what should we forget about our past? What about your past do you have difficulty letting go of that God would like you to leave behind?

2.)    God calls us NOT to forget some things. What are they according to Deuteronomy 4:9, 23; 8:11-14; Psalm 9:17; 78:7; 103:2, James 1:24 & 2 Peter 1:9.

3.)    As you look back over this past year, have there been any particular disappointments? What do you think God would like you to learn from them?

4.)    As you look forward to this new year, write down four or five things you think God would like you to remember and not forget?

5.)    As you look forward to God working in your life in 2015, what would you like to see him do in several areas such as your family, your own spiritual life, your ministry to others and your life with God’s people? Write those hopes down somewhere where you will be reminded to pray about them on a regular basis.