Resolved:

First published in The Daily Sentinel, Friday, January 4, 2007.

I had to start a new calendar this week. I would guess that’s true for most everyone. It’s now 2008! Happy New Year!! One thing I have learned as I have gotten older is how much more quickly time goes by now. I’m still having a hard time remembering that the year no longer start with a “1,” much less getting it right that it now ends in an “8.” Is this one of the first signs of senility?

While all of us had to get new calendars started this week, many of us also probably made new commitments to improve ourselves. “New Year’s Resolutions” are almost as traditional as “Yankee” sauerkraut or “Southerner” black-eyed peas. (I say Yankee and Southerner because to me sauerkraut is a new thing that I never encountered in Texas.)

But another thing I’ve learned as I’ve gotten older is that New Year’s Resolutions are about as effective and long term as blowing soap bubbles during a thunderstorm. We will resolve to exercise more, to eat less sweets or fats, to eat more vegetables and fruits, to quit smoking, drinking or swearing. Or we may resolve to show more patience with our families, to read that book we keep putting off, or to finally fix the broken lamp in the spare bedroom. We want to do more, be better, or look better in the coming year than we did in the previous year.

It’s no accident that you’re seeing a lot of commercials on TV right now for Jenny Craig, Weightwatchers and NutriSystems. They’re right there in the middle of beer and car commercials during the bowl games and NFL playoffs. The weight-loss industry knows that we’re a bunch of couch potatoes who will attempt to change this time of year, and there’s lots of money to be made from those attempts.

I’ve certainly made my share of New Years Resolutions. I want to lose weight, pray more, study my Bible more, be a better husband, father, friend. I want to exercise patience, kindness, and self-control. I want better time management skills, a more organized home and office. In short, I’d like to be better at a lot of things than I am right now.

So with all of these resolutions, how come I’m still the same ol’ me?

We know the success stories. Bill Gates goes from geeky nerd to world’s wealthiest man. Michael Jordon, who was rejected from a junior high school basketball team, becomes the world’s most recognizable athlete (and a fabulous basketball player!) And there’s Jared Fogle – the Subway guy. He used to weigh more than 400 pounds, but two lowfat Subway sandwiches and a mile-and-a-half-long walk everyday helped him drop 245 pounds and shrink a 60-inch waist down to 34 inches. A national celebrity is born!

How come none of their stories are my story?

New Years Resolutions cannot bring me – or anyone – success. Most of the time they’re nothing more than wishful thinking. And they’re no better than a lottery ticket. Yeah, somebody’s going to win the jackpot, but it’s such a low probability that it’ll be me. Lightning is more likely to strike me twice while I’m wearing a pink flamingo suit – in Kenya.

So what should we do with New Years Resolutions? Resolve not to make them anymore? There’s quite a few folks who’ve done that. But I have a better idea in mind.

Our New Years Resolutions need to become our religious vocations. What I mean by that is that we need to give our resolutions for self-improvement to God and take back from God what our REAL goal should be. Jesus Christ gave us a lifestyle for improvement. But his improvements won’t make me rich, or the world’s greatest athlete, or the next great sandwich spokesman. The kind of improvements Jesus can make are the kind that will last long after the computer age, long after the basketball is out of air, way past lunchtime. His improvements are eternal and divine.

Jesus wants to make us brand-new – from the inside out. The Apostle Paul described this as a mysterious dying and living: “For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin — because anyone who has died has been freed from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 6:6-11 NIV)

That’s not simple self-help, but life transformation! No New Years Resolution is capable of that kind of change. In fact, nothing we can do will make that kind of change. If we want to become the best people that we can be, we have to give up trying to do it ourselves and instead, cooperate with the work God is already doing!

This doesn’t mean, however, that we’re off the hook for life change. Just because we cannot do it alone, doesn’t mean we don’t do it at all. It’s truly a cooperative effort between me and God; between you and God. As one person put it: God provides the inspiration, we provide the perspiration. Then God creates the transformation.

I saw a transformation in 2007. A man about my age had lived a hard life: drug abuse, divorce, strained family relationships. Then he was diagnosed with cancer. It was bad stuff; inoperable. That man could have retreated into bitterness and self-pity. But he didn’t. He gave himself over to Jesus Christ. As he lost weight from the cancer, he gained peace. As he fought disease, he found joy. Not everything got better for him, but the priorities changed. What truly mattered did get better.

I saw him just before Christmas. He shared some deer jerky with me from his successful hunt after Thanksgiving. We talked about life, death; what happens next. He looked death in the face and found he wasn’t scared, anymore.

I learned this week that he died peacefully in his sleep. But he had given himself over to Jesus’ transforming change – and now he’s got more life than we can imagine.

If you only make one resolution this year, let it be this: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives within me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. Therefore, I will live this year for Him, with Him, because He lives!”