NEW YEARS RESOLUTION OR NEW CREATION?

Take your pick:
Lose Weight, Manage Debt, Save Money, Get a Better Job, Get Fit, Eat Right, Get a Better Education, Drink Less Alcohol, Quit Smoking Now, Reduce Stress Overall, Reduce Stress at Work, Take a Trip, Volunteer to Help Others.

According to USA.gov, these are the most common New Year’s resolutions every year. Looking at that list, I’ve tried a few of those in past years. The key word is “tried”. Whenever I make a New Year’s resolution, I get pretty excited. It means a new start. A chance to become a “better me”. The opportunity to create freshness in life that is much needed. But what it turns out to be is a chance to fail miserably in my attempt of a new beginning. It’s become such a standard to fail my New Year’s resolution, I’m starting to feel as if a New Year’s resolution is just as beneficial to make as having a Noodle Eater’s Hair Guard (see picture). WHAT’S THE POINT!!

“Whoever is a believer in Christ is a new creation. The old way of living has disappeared. A new way of living has come into existence.”- 2 Cor. 5:17

I realized that we need not wait for the beginning of the year to “start fresh”. We’ve been giving an opportunity today. The chance to wake up, take a step back and evaluate what our life looks like and start again. We’ve been made anew in Christ and we need to see what we’ve been made into and continuously align ourselves according to this “new creation” we’ve become. One of the dangers of being a new creation in Christ is we figure the work in us has been done and we leave it as is. Like an algae-filled lake in the late summer, we become stagnate due to lack of change. And the lack of change comes only because we don’t see what it means to be a new creation. We start to add onto this new creation all of the drama, stress, sin, anger, laziness, addiction, irresponsibility and so forth and figure that this is part of the “new creation package”. But if we are able wake up, take a step back and evaluate what our lives look like according to God’s plan of redemption and restoration, then we have begun to allow ourselves to see what needs to take place in order to start fresh today…..not next year.