Lots of people make resolutions for a new year.  They want to lose weight or start exercising or be healthier.  I no longer make New Year’s resolutions.  There are plenty of things I would like to improve about myself and I probably should lose weight or exercise more.  But my goal in 2018 is the same goal that I have every single day:  to walk in love with Jesus Christ.

Walking in love with Jesus Christ is a daily resolution for me.  Some days I’m better at it than others.  I might even have a few days in a row where I think I am really doing well (except for that sinful pride thing).  But then I wake up in a bad mood and snap at Tom or settle into a spirit of discontent and I know I have to start again.  It doesn’t matter if it is a new year or just another new day.  Everyday I start the resolution again.  Today I will walk in love with Jesus Christ.

Fortunately God is very forgiving.  God doesn’t care how many times I screw up.  My screwing up grieves his heart.  But repenting and returning to the effort are more important than my success on any given day.  King David, in the Bible, screwed up in some really big ways.  Despite David’s sins, however, God called him “a man after my own heart.” (1 Samuel 13:14).  And that’s what I want to be.  A woman after God’s own heart.  A woman who seeks God’s will in all things.  Someone who walks in love with Jesus Christ every minute of every day.

It is a new year but it is not a new me.  Not yet.  I may go new places, learn new things, and do things I have never done before.  But wherever I go, I take myself with me.  If I want to be new, I have to give myself to Jesus Christ every day and let him mold and shape me.  It’s part of that whole being born again thing.  Even more than putting off the old self, I must be transformed into the image of Jesus Christ.  I cannot do it on my own – I must rely on him.

Ephesians 4:20-24:  That, however, is not the way of life you learned when you heard about Christ and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds;  and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

It is a new year but I am not new.  Not yet.  Jesus Christ is still working on me and in me.  The more I leave it to him, the more my life will be transformed into something after God’s own heart.