Return Your Neighbor’s Plow, and Other New Year’s Resolutions

If you’ve somehow forgotten to return the tractor or plow or some other type of farm equipment that you borrowed from your neighbor in 2013, now is the time to get that taken care of.

Sort of random?

Well, the Babylonians, who (as far as we know) started the whole idea of New Year’s resolutions at least as far back as 153 BC, cited returning borrowed farm equipment as the most frequently made New Year’s resolution.

According to a Harris Poll, modern Americans’ top New Year’s Resolutions are:

1. Lose weight
2. Improve finances
3. Exercise
4. Get a new job
5. Eat healthier
6. Manage stress better
7. Stop smoking
8. Improve a relationship
9. Stop procrastinating
10. Set aside time for yourself

All respectful things to strive for.

The early Romans also practiced resolution making.  The first month of the year, January, was named after the mythical Roman king, Janus, who had two faces:  one looking backward, the other looking forward.

Janus’ symbolic design reminded the Romans to look back at the previous year and evaluate what went well and what didn’t, and then consider the changes they would like to make during the year to come.

I think they were on to something.

The history of New Year practices includes gift giving.  An interesting tidbit:  In times past, English husbands gave their wives money on New Year’s Day to buy pins and other small items.  This custom disappeared in the 1800’s; however, the term PIN MONEY still means small amounts of spending money.

The more you know…

The American colonists were a bit more boisterous, as they would get together to fire off their guns, drink, eat a lot, and attend church.

So maybe you, like me, didn’t borrow any farm equipment from your neighbor this past year.  Perhaps you have plenty of pin money.  Maybe you are thinking more along the lines of the Harris Poll list.

Or maybe you hate resolutions and never make any.

As Christians, we sometimes wonder if we should be making resolutions at all.  Does it focus too much on worldly matters?  Is it really God directing our lives, or is it our own selfishness?

While we don’t want the things we do and the choices we make to simply be all about us, Christianity at its core is all about transformation and becoming more Christ-like as we live within the grace God has given us.

As with many things, God didn’t say anything specifically about resolutions, at least as we define them.

We have to figure this out for ourselves.

Many people I know don’t make New Year’s Resolutions.  Or if they do, they don’t take it very seriously.  They like the idea of making positive changes, but they don’t take it further than that.  Some say that resolutions never work, so why bother.  Others say that it’s just a meaningless tradition, or a waste of time.

Some people don’t like the word “resolutions”.

My solution?  Call it something else.  Call it making plans, or goals, or decisions.

I think, for the most part, many of us don’t make resolutions because it’s so much easier to make excuses than to actually change old, comfortable habits.

We’ve been making excuses since the very beginning, in the Garden of Eden.  “The serpent made me do it.”  “That woman you gave me?  SHE made me do it.”

We all have excuses. Honestly, I think people say that resolutions are stupid because they are embarrassed by the fact that they haven’t been able to keep them in the past, so they call resolution-making “ridiculous”, instead of focusing on the real issue – their inability to persevere and make the changes they need to make.

Was that too direct?  Oops.

I believe New Year’s resolutions are worth making.

I believe that, even though grace saves us, our efforts to become more Christ-like, to serve God with every facet of our lives, honors God.

“Faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”  ~  James 2:17

And resolutions can help keep us on track in that effort.

Let me tell you why.

1.  You aren’t perfect

There are things about you that can and should change.   And if you don’t do this ON PURPOSE, nothing will change.

If you’re honest with yourself, there are some things that need serious thought and reevaluation.  “This is just the way I am,” is an incredibly self-centered statement that basically says, “I know I have a problem here.  I just don’t really care.”

“If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth.”  ~  1 John 1:8

New Year’s resolutions fit in very nicely with the pattern of Christian life, which is meant to be a continuous, purposeful renewal, a serious striving to become more like Christ.

“Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.”  ~  Romans 12:2

When you were baptized, you became a new creation.  God did that to you.  You didn’t earn your salvation.  But He also didn’t throw water at you and say, “Yay!  All done!”

Think about this:  People join churches all the time, but they don’t seem to become any more of a new creation than they did when they joined, let’s say, the Elks Club.  And the truth of the matter is that many of these people no more expected to become a new creation when they joined the church than they expected to become an elk when they joined the Elks.

“If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”   ~  2 Corinthians 5:17

And yet, a new creation is exactly what we ARE.  God does the transforming.  And just like we have to receive God’s offer of salvation – He doesn’t force it on anyone – we also have to allow ourselves to BE that new creation.

2.  Change Doesn’t Just Happen

The change you want to experience doesn’t ordinarily occur unless you take steps to make it happen.

Sure, you could say “I want to lose weight!” as one of your New Year’s Resolutions, then come down with h-pylori and lose a ton of weight, through no planning or effort of your own.  But it doesn’t USUALLY happen that way, and I wouldn’t recommend that particular weight loss plan.

Most of the time, you will have to DECIDE you are going to make a change.  Become different.  Become more.  You will have to mean it when you say it.

Then you will have to DO something differently.  On purpose.  And that takes planning.

When we change, we actually “repent”, which simply means turning away from something.  We stop doing one thing and do something else instead.

This “turning away from” and “turning towards” doesn’t just happen.  It takes purposeful action.  We resolve to do something differently.  Thus, “resolutions”.

A resolution is a plan to change.  That’s all it is.  It’s not a stupid word.  It’s not a meaningless idea.

Are you married?  You made resolutions when you got married.  But you called them vows.  Those were resolutions, and I hope you didn’t think they were stupid.

A resolution is simply a firm decision to adhere to a plan.

Continuous improvement, purposeful living, reevaluating and resolving to change are very Biblical concepts.  When we become Christians, not only do we become new creations…

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”  ~  Galatians 6:15

“Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is a new creation.”   ~  2 Corinthians 5:17

…but every day we become newer than we were the day before.

That’s absolutely amazing.

“Throw off your old sinful nature and your former way of life, which is corrupted by lust and deception.  Instead, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes.  Put on your new nature, created to be like God—truly righteous and holy.”  ~  Ephesians 4:22-24

I’m going to throw some science at you now.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that everything is running down, wearing out, growing old and dying.  As soon as something new is made, it immediately starts to age, decay, rust, rot, die and disintegrate.

If you challenge the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, you aren’t going to win.

But in the kingdom of Christ, spiritually, we don’t become older and older and decay the way we do here on earth.  God makes us new and continues to make us newer and newer as each day goes by.

IF we’ll cooperate with Him.

I love Rick Warren’s “Purpose Driven Life” and “Purpose Driven Church” concepts.  To do good, to bring people to Christ, to discover and refine the gifts you have been given, to be content and useful and a blessing – we have to be purposeful.

Otherwise, we are just flailing around, hoping things work out ok.  We avoid situations that will spotlight our weak areas, instead of facing our issues.  We end up feeling like a victim, like for some reason stuff just keeps happening to us.

And that is not only a shame; it’s a waste of your life.

Most of us live our lives on auto-pilot. Like an airplane that’s been programmed to fly from New York to Paris, we wake up in the morning and just sort of go through the motions of our routine. More often than not, we are completely out of touch with what we are saying or doing: “I can’t believe I did that”, or “Did I really say that?” “I keep making the same mistakes over and over.” “I can’t change.”

“Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but    be transformed by the renewing of your mind,    so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”   –   Romans 12:1-2

 3.  The New Year is a great time to make some changes

There is no “right” or “perfect” time to put in place a plan for change.

But the New Year presents an obvious time to make a change.  The whole world focuses on the “New” of New Year.  The change from 2013 to 2014 is obvious and everywhere.

It’s as good a time as any.

The risk of starting your changes on January 1, with a whole entire new year staring expectantly into your face, is that you may feel like giving up when you screw up.  Notice I didn’t say “if” you screw up, I said “when”.

This isn’t going to go perfectly.

We can be awfully hard on ourselves.  “See?  I knew I couldn’t do this.  I might as well not even try…”

But remember “grace”?  You will have to offer yourself grace as you purposefully march towards change.  Don’t keep focusing on the failures.  Stay in the present instead of the past and keep on going.  You don’t give up just because you had a weak moment.

When you fall, pick yourself up, take a look at why you fell, revise the plan if necessary, and begin again.

Right then.  Not next January 1.

Success is not measured by “never breaking” the resolution. Success is measured by renewing the resolution one time more than you break it.

I love reading about the Apostle Paul.  He’s so human, and I can relate to so much of what he writes. Talk about picking yourself up and continuing on after everything falls apart. Throughout his life he was opposed, persecuted, shipwrecked, stoned and left for dead, deserted by trusted co-workers, slandered, and scorned. He experienced a lot of what we would call failure.

But in one of the letters he wrote from prison, we see his steadfast unwillingness to quit.

“Forgetting what is behind, and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”  ~  Philippians 4:13-14

I want to be like Paul – no matter what happened to him, he didn’t give up.  He lived his beliefs.  He stopped looking back at all the things that tried to defeat him, and looked forward instead. He didn’t let the fear of failure keep him from trying again.

Jonathon Edwards, widely acknowledged to be America’s most important and original philosophical theologian, and one of America’s greatest intellectuals, in his 70 resolutions, wrote:

“Being sensible that I am unable to do anything without God’s help, I do humbly entreat him by his grace to enable me to keep these resolutions, so far as they are agreeable to his will, for Christ’s sake.”

That’s how you keep this from being all about you.  Any change we bring about, we do with God’s help.  Changing old habits is really hard to do.  We tend to fall back into the familiar because it’s so much EASIER.

And sometimes, if we’re honest, we don’t really want to change in the first place.

It is only with God’s direction and strength that we can do more.

“I can do everything through Him who gives me strength.”           ~  Philippians 4:13

OK, stop for a second.  Most people read that verse and say, “EVERYthing?  Can I be a duck if I want to badly enough??”

No.  You can’t.

In that passage, Paul was talking about being content.  He explained how he’d LEARNED to be content – even when he was in prison, shipwrecked, beaten, having plenty, having  nothing – no matter what.

And he wasn’t able to do it because he just scrunched his eyes up, made fists, and tried real hard.

He was able to be content – through all of that – because “I can do everything through Him who gives me strength.”

He wasn’t talking about flying to the moon without a spaceship.  He was talking about being transformed.  On purpose, and because of God’s strength that went beyond what he could do on his own power.

“The temptations in your life are no different from what others experience. And God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you can endure.”  ~  1 Corinthians 10:13

God’s love, grace, and strength enable us to endure crises and temptations that would be too much to bear on our own.

If you decide you want to be a doctor, you have to do more than wear a long white lab coat and hang out in a hospital.  Even after you finish your schooling, you spend your life evaluating your skills and your views and your practices, dropping some old ideas here, adding new skills there.  Realizing that there is always more to learn, more to perfect.  And you do this – until you are done being a doctor.

We need to look at our lives the same way.  Only with honest, regular, purposeful review and readjustment will we become who we were created to be.   For as long as we are alive.

So why make resolutions on January 1?

Why NOT?   Why not look for every opportunity to become MORE, to become the “you” God created you to be?

We can all make plenty of excuses.  But I’d rather take an honest look at myself and make some resolutions instead.

Live intentionally.  Live with purpose.

Seriously, make some resolutions.

**   My next blog post will focus on HOW to create resolutions that have a good chance of being successful.  **