It’s that time of year again, although if I DID make New Year’s resolutions, by this, the third day of the New Year, I would be certain to have already broken at least one.
I imagine it’s the same for you. If it’s not, you either don’t make any resolutions, or you are at a place in your Spirit-sanctification that’s quite a bit further than my own. For that I praise God (and, if you wish I’d say “for that, I congratulate you,” then, well . . . you’ve sinned. Join the crowd, friend).
We all, if we are Christians sincerely seeking to know God and be conformed to the likeness of the Son, want to stop sinning. We can’t, so we try to sin less. We don’t. So we try to set up resolutions, rules, regulations, and roads to righteousness to keep us pleasing to our God, who no doubt finds this gently amusing. Perhaps now is a good time to share this from my favorite devotional, the treasure that is The Valley Of Vision from Banner of Truth Trust (1975), which borrows from the Puritans:
“My God, I feel it is heaven to please thee, and to be what thou wouldst have me be.
O that I were holy as thou art holy, pure as Christ is pure, perfect as thy Spirit is perfect!
These, I feel, are the best commands in thy Book, and shall I break them? Must I break them? Am I under such a necessity as long as I live here?
Woe, woe is me that I am a sinner, that I grieve this blessed God, who is infinite in goodness and grace! O, if he would punish me for my sins, it would not wound my heart so deep to offend him. But though I sin continually, he continually repeats his kindness to me. At times I feel I could bear any suffering, but how can I dishonour this glorious God? What shall I do to glorify and worship this best of beings?
O, that I would consecrate my soul and body to his service, without restraint, forever! O that I would give myself up to him, so as never more to attempt to be my own, or have any will or affections that are not perfectly conformed to his will and his love!
But, alas, I cannot live and not sin. O, may angels glorify him incessantly, and, if possible, prostrate themselves lower before the blessed King of heaven! I long to bear a part with him in ceaseless praise. But when I have done all I can to eternity I shall not be able to offer more than a small fraction of the homage that the glorious God deserves. Give me a heart full of divine, heavenly love.”
Seek God, love Jesus, listen to the Spirit, and know that relying on your own efforts to “be better” will virtually guarantee that you sin more than your striving heart can bear. Believe me, I write for myself as much as for anyone else.
I have a problem with language — basically, I was raised in a family where we swore like sailors. We never used the F-word, nor took the Lord’s name in vain, but everything else was fair game in the dialect of the Emerine household when I was a kid. At 52, I still struggle with speech that is not pleasing to God, speech peppered with casual, indifferent vulgarities that I scarcely notice. They don’t even SEEM like “bad words” — that is, when I notice them. But coarse language displeases God — not “strong language,” which is necessary in these times and is woefully lacking in a Church nurtured on the dulcet tones of “niceness” and not the soul-stirring melody of courage, but “bad language.” That I’ve been using bad language since I was six doesn’t make it OK now, just more entrenched.
So I’ve found the words above painfully true in my own life. When I’m walking filled with the Holy Spirit and at peace with the unfolding of God’s work in my life, I notice that I tend to hardly ever drop a bomb of any letter. But set out to try to not swear anymore, or so much, or between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m.m, or when I’m wearing green, or if anyone’s with me?
I’ll sound like Richard Pryor by the time my coffee cup is empty.
So, because I know you know how this feels, I offer these words — for us, for the Glory of the Lord Jesus, in the service of God, powered by the Spirit who loves us and works within us.
Peace to you this year.