The New Year

When I was a teenager, I made New Year's resolutions.   Things like

• I'll try to be nice to my brother.

And I was nice to him . . . until he made me angry.  

• I'll do things around the house without being asked or told.

And I did . . . unless I didn't feel like it.  

• I'm going to please God all the time - at school, at home, with my friends.

And I meant it . . . unless pleasing God meant giving up something I wanted to do.

After a few years of making resolutions and failing miserably at keeping them, I learned that making resolutions didn't make me good.  In fact, they seemed to point out to me what a failure I really was.  Resolutions didn't teach me anything except that I couldn't keep them.

I had good intentions but I seemed to never live up to my own expectations.  All those resolutions didn't fix my problems or temptations or bad habits.  The problem with my resolutions is that they were based on my trying to do things in my own strength.

I've never done well in my own strength.  

But one New Year's Day back in 1978,  I was in a car filled with college students as we were coming home from a Cru student conference.  I remember leaning my head on the window in the backseat, staring out, and thinking about my life. 

I had grown up in a good home, I was taught right from wrong,  I had loving parents, I had a good life.  I loved high school and I loved being a college student - I loved my life.  I was the kind of girl who didn't think too long or too hard about things and I certainly didn't worry much.  But I did have one nagging frustration - my roller coaster life with God.  

I had good intentions where God was concerned.  I loved His word but I wasn't consistent studying it.

I loved obeying God but I also found it irritating when obedience to Him was in conflict with temptations in my life.

I wanted my unbelieving friends to be believers but I didn't want to make them uncomfortable.  

So on that New Year's Day, I was thinking about these things in the car.  See, for the couple of months leading up to this day, my world had been turned upside down after I learned that one of my friends was killed in a car accident.

I was trying to make sense of it all.  I had a lot of questions.  This carefree girl had been worrying and thinking long and hard.  God knew.  And He answered a lot of my questions at that conference.  It was like I was the only one there and many of my worries were abated.

But I had one worry that wouldn't leave.    I was so afraid that once I got back home or back to campus, I would get right back on the roller coaster.  Good intentions gone awry.

BUT.  GOD.  He heard the pleas of my heart.  I was pleading with - no, I was begging Him to make my life count and to never be ashamed to speak of Him or live for Him.  

I usually think about that car trip every New Year's Day.  God is so very faithful.  He crashed that roller coaster back then.  My life changed.  My life had a plumb line - one that I was beginning to understand.  Because I came to a better understanding of the grace of God, His unmerited favor in my life, His unconditional love for me, His choosing me before the foundation of the world that I would be holy and blameless before Him - all this according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace . . .

I came to a new understanding of my redemption.  And I wanted to live all my days for Him - whether I lived to see another New Year or not.

Well, it's been 34 years since that day and I haven't been on a roller coaster since.  Ups and downs in life?  Oh yes.  BUT. GOD. 

I've never liked roller coasters or making resolutions anyway.  Happy New Year.