Here we are again breaking in on another new year. We learn so much about humanity’s desire for a fresh start just by looking at the advertisement world. As per usual every new year there is a renewed enthusiasm toward health, fitness, better financial planning and tracking our personal goals for a bright year ahead. And the advertising market knows exactly how to meet those goals. Savvy folks get our attention by producing every new gadget, plan and personal motivator to promise ensured success. No judgement here, just making an observation of our innate desire to do better.
While I like the rest of us am eager to fresh possibilities, my hopes must transcend the momentary, the celebrated, or the temporal.
In Acts 11:23 we read, “Then when he arrived and witnessed the grace of God, he rejoiced and began to encourage them all with resolute heart to remain true to the Lord;
Although Barnabas was encouraging new believers when he said these words, I believe it is timely to every believer. The world will wear us down, the church is imperfect, God’s leaders will fail, disease will take it’s toll, friends will come and go and a host of similar effects of living in this world has the potential to disillusion anyone who places their faith in Christ. No one is the exception! As I look back on my life (I just celebrated my 62nd birthday) I’m more convince than ever before that the fight is worth fighting for but the choices are up to me. Not just one choice as though one and done. It’s many choices that follow again and again and for a lifetime.
I found this comment on Acts 11:23 to help underscore what I’m hoping to communicate. “The first thing that strikes one about this all-sufficient directory for Christian life is the emphasis with which it sets forth ‘the Lord’ as the one object to be grasped and held.” Alexander Maclaren
Websters opens up great definitions of the word resolute: do-or-die, marked by firm determination, doggedly determined to reach one’s objective : INDOMITABLE
I want to steward my salvation well. I prayed long ago that God would make me a woman of faith and fortitude and yet I am grieved at my track record. Time and again I have echoed the words of David, “Create for me a pure heart, O God! Renew a resolute spirit within me! Psalm 51:10
Time, seasons and the manifold mercies of God in my story have left me with a growing clarity that my salvation is a gift that I must offer back to Him. As He wills how He wills, nothing else and nothing less. I came across this prayer from an old hymn book years ago. The Lord keeps bringing it back to me and for that I give thanks.
Teach us, good Lord, to serve thee as thou deservest; to give and not to count the cost; to fight and not to heed the wounds; to toil and not to seek for rest; to labor and not to ask for any reward, save that of knowing that we do thy will; through Jesus Christ our Lord. AMEN