I resolved to give up New Year’s resolutions long ago, somewhere along a trail littered with broken ones. It’s the only resolution I’ve kept!
The start of a new calendar year naturally prompts many of us to evaluate what’s going well in our life and what isn’t.
But resolutions typically involve drastic lifestyle changes, and we often make the resolutions with only a start date in mind and without a realistic game plan for change.
Once upon a mission trip back in my youth ministry days, I asked youth to rate the state of their spiritual life on a scale of 1-10. When asked to do so, people – young or old – almost always choose a number without much thought.
Not my friend, John, a high school student at the time. He raised his hand and said, “I’m a 4.3.”I loved the answer, primarily because it was honest and thoughtful. But I also loved it because it was a bit of an epiphany for me.
Time and again, I’d gotten discouraged in my faith journey by trying to go from a 4.3 straight to a 10. I jumped right into the good things I knew I should be doing more often – prayer, scripture reading, serving others.
The rush brought an initial spiritual “high” but it faded when I’d slip up somehow. Then, I had to deal with guilt of another broken resolution and often felt like I was in a worse place spiritually than when I started.
John’s answer made me realize that our short-term goal shouldn’t be to move from 4.3 to 10. It should be to move from 4.3 to 4.4 then 4.5 and 4.6 and so on. We should also be prepared for a bit of backsliding at some point because we are human and life takes crazy turns sometimes and that’s OK.
I do believe with all my heart that God loves us unconditionally.
But I also believe God wants us to experience more fully the abundant life that comes with passionately following Jesus. And God will be with us as we seek to change our priorities, to change our ways, no matter how long it might take.
An honest evaluation of our spiritual life and our priorities is a good thing at this or any other time of the year. We just need to make sure we put a realistic game plan in place to make that incremental move to a better place, one step at a time. ~ Forrest
