Resolved.

(A New Year's letter I wrote to my family to be read on New Year's Eve as a challenge and source of encouragement. May it do the same for anyone who sees and reads this. Happy New Year!)

The New Year is upon us!

With the coming of the new year we are naturally inclined to look forward. We make resolutions for a better year, a more productive year, a fuller year; and more than that, a fuller life. We see all that the new year could hold if we just harness the power inside ourselves. We can visualize it. We hope in it. We make lists containing all that we aspire our new year to hold. Many times, to our shame, our resolutions fail. That renewed vigor and determination that came with the new year often leaves with the realization that it's just another day in the same life we have lived up until this point. We have the desire to change but not the will to do so. That power that we felt so strongly with the ring of the new year dissipates within the everyday comforts that bring the strong pull of complacency. Then, at the end of the year, we look back and see that we accomplished little of what we intended or resolved to in the first place.

And so, with the coming of the new year, we are also inclined to look back. We become introspective and try to analyze why we failed, once again, at our resolutions. We see that life hasn't changed much. We're in the same place as last year so we try to figure out where we fell short in an attempt to succeed in the coming year. Same cycle every year. Eventually we just stop making resolutions. We're comfortable anyway, and resolutions just bring restraint and eventual failure. So what's the point, right? Where's the benefit?

Well, I think there is a point, and I think it is beneficial. I think the point and the benefit lies within the reflection on the past year and the hope in the future- though both need to be redirected. Our reflection needs to be directed not to ourselves and what we have accomplished in the past year, but what Christ has already accomplished for us at the Cross and what He is still accomplishing through us now. We can be confident that, "he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ," and that "he works all things together for the good of those who love him, who are called according to His purpose." Every good thing that we accomplished in the past year was by God's grace and His grace alone, and every failure and disappointment was also given to us by His gracious and perfect will. It was His hand that brought us both and we are to bless Him in each instance and join Job in saying, "The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord."

The past year has held many blessings and trials. After considering the past year I think we all have reason to be humbled before the Lord and to fall upon our faces in absolute awe and worship of Him who has been exceedingly merciful and abundantly gracious toward each one of us, and to our family as a whole. We have sinned and erred yet the Lord has not forsaken us. We have acted in ungodly ways and have cast shame upon His name--driving the nails further into His hands and piercing His side with the spear--yet He calls us sons and takes delight in our salvation. It is He "who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy." He disciplines us for our good and, upon looking at His faithless bride, says with compassion, "I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall know that I am the Lord, that you may remember and be confounded, and never open your mouth again because of your shame, when I atone for you for all that you have done."

We are drawn out of ourselves and our gaze is fixed instead upon the Cross of Christ. We see how greatly we have grieved the Lord and the Spirit humbles us and works in our heart a broken-hearted repentance. When we are faithless He remains faithful. He has proved it over and over. Christ is our faithful Bridegroom who came, "that he might sanctify [us] having cleansed [us] by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that [we] might be holy and without blemish." 

That is the story of redemption. That is what we have been given in His work of salvation and bitter passion. 

That the Lord has not left us should be what was noteworthy about the past year, and His promise that He never will should be our great hope in the future. 

Let us remember that. Let us recall our union with Him. Let us draw from that rich well of blessings that we have been given in Christ; finding the strength and grace we need to overcome sin and temptation. Let us bless him and cry out with Paul, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places!"

So, let that be our resolve-- to constantly put before us the reality of our union with Christ and to remember what we have been so graciously given in that union- every spiritual blessing. Let us reflect Christ's character in all our actions and dealings with others. If "we love because He first loved us" then let us love each other well and bear one another's burdens. That is how we fulfill the law of Christ. He humbled himself to the point of death, therefore let us likewise consider others before ourselves. We have Christ abiding in us--He has given us His love and the ability to love as He loves--therefore let us draw from that well of love. We have sinned against each other and we have sinned against the Lord in this past year and the Lord's response is to "love one another earnestly, for love covers over a multitude of sin." See how gracious He is! His yoke is easy and His burden is light! 

Each one of us can look back upon our past year and see the many failures and successes it has brought us individually, but we can also look back collectively and see God's gracious dealings with us. So let our resolve be to honor Christ and to honor others, to love Christ and to love others. Let our resolution be that we join with David in saying, "I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways. I will delight in your statutes; I will not forget your word." 

As the Lord has worked and continues to work in our lives let us be acutely aware of all that He has done and is doing in our lives. May it be that we turn from all of our petty resolves and see instead the resolve that Christ has made between us and Himself through His work on the Cross. Let us look to His past work and draw from that the strength we need to faithfully serve Him as we wait upon the promises that we have been given partially now, but will be ours completely in that Last Day. That is the hope that will motivate us- that He will keep us. That He will accomplish. That all that He has resolved will be completed.

In Christ,

K