Happy New Year

It’s almost obligatory to have a Happy New Year message on your blog. It’s nice to wish good things upon your readers. For me, it’s also nice to imagine that I have readers to send such greetings. It’s a circle.

Holidays, both secular and religious, are filled with traditions. What are your New Year’s traditions? Depending on where you live, it might be eating peas and greens in the belief that such a meal brings you wealth and luck. In most places, you will find people who make New Year’s resolutions. Are such resolutions good for Christians? It really depends on the promise, whether the promise is worth making, and whether we intend to keep the promise. Maybe you will resolve to get out of debt, to exercise, to eat better, to lose weight, or accomplish any other thing that is important to you.

Most of us break our resolutions. We’re human. I recently got rid of a treadmill I purchased after a resolution to get in better shape. Perhaps you have done the same. We mean well, but why do we make promises that we don’t intend to keep? Maybe it’s because we feel better after simply identifying the areas of our lives that we wish to improve, but we make no real covenant to improve those areas.

There is the important word. Covenant. The Bible speaks often of covenants. Christ brought a new covenant to all of us. He promised to forgive our sins and atoned for them with his own blood. That’s pretty powerful. What if you had to make your New Year’s covenant as a promise to God? Perhaps I would never have bought the treadmill.

As 2006 begins, let’s all make a covenant to spend more time with God. That’s really an easy promise to make, because he is always with us. No matter what other resolutions you make for the year, if you promise to spend more time with God daily, you will find the rest of your promises easier to keep.

For the new year, I am not going to make any other promise other than to spend more time improving my faith. I want to get out of debt this year, I want expand my business, I want to do more to help others, and I want to spend time with my family. I can’t promise to do all of those things on my own. From the starting point of faith, however, I am going to pray that God will bless me with opportunity.

Deuteronomy 29:9
Therefore, observe the words of this covenant and follow them, so that you will succeed in everything you do.