A New Year King
Philippians 3:7-14
"Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?"
(Galatians 3:2-3)
Every year at this time I am torn between making New Year's resolutions and not making them! On the one hand, it is good to review our lives and seek change for the better; on the other, I know that my resolutions usually fade come January, and this can be dispiriting. Why bother?
I have come to see that rather than set my own priorities for my life, I need to ask the King what He wants in my life. Also, I find that I need to put less faith in resolutions and more in the only One who really can be resolute. I need to depend more on the "God who works in [me] to will and to act according to his good purposes" (Philippians 2:13) rather than on my own willpower.
Instead of starting every year with a list of resolutions like last year's, ask the Lord to speak to you each day, by His Word and in prayer and in the many nudges His Spirit gives you. Listen to His voice. And let the King's proclamation of love and providence for you determine the priorities for your life. May His reign carry you through!
INSIGHT
With the same great explosive power that raised Jesus from the dead, God can raise me afresh each day as I ask Him.
READ THROUGH THE BIBLE IN A YEAR
Zechariah 10-14
Proverbs 30
Revelation 18-19
Philippians 3:7-14
7 But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8 What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. 10 I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.
Pressing on Toward the Goal
12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13 Brothers, 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.
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