(or) A New Year's Resolution We Can All Embrace
We are 15 days into 2009, and if you’re like me, that’s just about enough time to have made some resolutions, failed to keep them, and perhaps even given up altogether. This seems to be the pattern with me as each New Year begins, which is why I have a distinct distaste for the whole process. No matter how good my intentions are to start with, life always seems to sabotage my follow-through. It reminds me of that line from a Robert Burns poem about a farmer, whose plow accidently tore a mouse’s nest apart, causing him to wax eloquent about how easily things can disrupt our plans and why we should thus learn to live in the present moment. The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry, Burns wrote. How true.
But this year something happened to change my outlook. One morning towards the end of December I was communing with the Lord and sensed Him impressing my heart with this question: if you could make only one New Year’s resolution, what would it be? I thought back over past commitments – to eat healthier or exercise more or pray longer or study harder… the list went on an on. But as I sat there wondering and waiting on the Lord, the answer came like a bolt of lightning. If I could only make one New Year’s resolution, could have only one purpose to pour every ounce of determination I have into, it would be this: I would seek to learn to live in God’s love – moment by moment, day in and day out, week by week and month after month.
Now before you zone out on me, let me ask you a question. Do you both know and believe God’s love for you? The apostle John wrote: We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. (1 John 4:16). The word ‘know’ here speaks of an intimate, relational experience and the word ‘believe’ means to not only agree with something, but to put your complete confidence in it. So let me ask it this way: Do you experience the wonder of how much God loves you, intimately and regularly? Are you so confident of His love that your roots are sunk deep into it and you feel more at home there than anyplace else?
If the answer is yes, then you are most blessed of believers! But if this is something you still struggle with to some degree, then I’d like to invite you to join me in something I’ll call Living Loved 2009, which you can do by prayerfully agreeing to the following:
In the coming year, I resolve to live my life in pursuit of greater awareness,
keener insight and more tangible experiences of what it means to be loved by Almighty God.
Did you know that God actually commands us to do this? Jude 1:24 instructs us to keep ourselves in God’s love, which means to pay careful attention to or guard attentively. So how do we do that? That’s the million dollar question of course. What I would like to offer is a simple plan that involves four Scripture passages we will press into over the course of the year. I’ll be sharing some tips on how to do this – from memorizing to meditating and everything in between, along with devotional thoughts as God leads. My hope is that whether two or two hundred of us say yes to the challenge to learn to live in God’s love, we will be able to share our struggles, insights and joys, to encourage and strengthen each other along the way. To that end, I am really excited to offer a comment page where we can interact online. Click here for more information on how you can be a part of this.
Whether you feel led to join us in this particular plan or not, I am praying that your year will be one of increased pleasure in being loved by the God who made you for Himself.
In Him,
Tricia
