| We are at the threshold of
A NEW YEAR. What lies in store for us? Will we repeat the
errors and mistakes of last year? Are we going to make stupid resolutions
in the flesh, only to see them violated before the month is past? As a
Christian, if you make a “New Year’s resolution” it could only be one
thing – to “walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the
flesh.” Galatians 5:16
Our Lord never "patches up" our natural
virtues, that is, our natural traits, qualities, or characteristics of our
flesh. He completely remakes a person on the inside—” . . .
put on the new man
. . ." (Ephesians 4:24) “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born
of the Spirit is spirit.” In
other words, know that your natural human life (the flesh) is crucified and
“reckon ye also
yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus
Christ our Lord.”
The life God places within us develops
its own new virtues, not the virtues of the seed of Adam, but of “the
Spirit of Life in Jesus Christ”.
And “the fruit of
the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
gentleness, self-control.” Once
God has begun the process “we
all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are
changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of
the Lord”.
Watch and see how God causes your
confidence in your own natural virtues and power to wither away. He will
continue until you learn to draw your life from the reservoir of the
resurrection life of Jesus, “For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God
through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall
be saved by His life.” Thank
God if you are going through this drying-up experience to lose your
self-confidence, for we are those “which
worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and
have no confidence in the flesh.”
The sign that God is at work in us is
that He is destroying our confidence in the natural virtues, because they
are not promises of what we are going to be, but only a wasted reminder of
what God created man to be. We tend to cling to our natural virtues, while
all the time God is bringing us into the realization of the life of Jesus
Christ in us—a life that can never be described in terms of natural
virtues.
It is the saddest thing to see people
who are trying to serve God depending on that which the grace of God never
gave them. They are depending
solely on what they have by virtue of heredity. God does not take our
natural virtues and transform them, because our natural virtues could never
even come close to what Jesus Christ wants. No natural love, no natural
patience, no natural purity can ever come up to His demands. But as we
bring every part of our natural bodily life into harmony with the new life
God has placed within us, He will exhibit in us the virtues that are
characteristic of the Lord Jesus. “But
by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from
God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, that, just as it
is written, ‘LET HIM WHO BOASTS, BOAST IN THE LORD’.”
Last Year -
At the end of the year we turn with
eagerness to all that God has for the future, and yet anxiety is apt to
arise when we remember last year. Our present enjoyment of God’s grace tends
to be lessened by the memory of yesterday’s sins and blunders. But God is
the God of last year, and He allows the memory of it to turn the past into a
ministry of spiritual growth for our future. God reminds us of the past to
protect us from a very shallow security of self-reliance in the present.
Next Year -
“ . . . the Lord will go before you . . .." This is a gracious revelation— God will send His forces out
where we have failed to do so. He will keep watch so that we will not be
tripped up again by the same failure of independence, as would undoubtedly
happen if He were not growing us in grace. And God’s grace reaches back to
the past, eliminating all the claims against our conscience. “There
is therefore now
(this very second)
no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
Right Now -
as we go forth into the coming year, let us not be impetuous, forgetful, or
thoughtless. But let us be in the patient power of knowing that our Father
will go before us. Our yesterdays hold broken and irreversible things for
us. It is true that we have lost opportunities that will never return, but
God can transform this destructive anxiety into a constructive
thoughtfulness for the future. Let the past rest, (“forgetting
those things which are behind”)
but let it rest in the sweet embrace of Christ. Leave the broken,
irreversible past in His hands, and step out into the invincible future with
Him.
It is only a faithful person who truly
believes that God sovereignly controls his circumstances. We take our
circumstances for granted, saying God is in control, but not really
believing it. We act as if the things that happen were completely controlled
by people. For us to be faithful in every circumstance requires that we have
only one loyalty, or object of our faith, the Lord Jesus Christ.
God may cause our circumstances to
suddenly fall apart, which may bring the realization of our unfaithfulness
to Him for not recognizing that He had ordained the situation. We never saw
what He was trying to accomplish, and that exact event will never be
repeated in our life. This is the test where we discover His faithfulness.
If we will just learn to worship God even during the difficult
circumstances, He will change them for the better very quickly if He so
chooses, or He will change us by the experience.
Being faithful to Jesus Christ is the
most difficult thing we try to do today. We will be faithful to our work, to
serving others, or to anything else; just don’t ask us to be faithful to
Jesus Christ. Many Christians become very impatient when we talk about
faithfulness to Jesus. The Christian dethrones our Lord Jesus Christ more
deliberately than the world. We treat God as if He were a machine designed
only to bless us, and we think of Jesus as just another one of the workers.
The goal of faithfulness is not that we
will do work for God, but that He will be free to do His work through us.
God calls us to His service and places tremendous responsibilities on us. He
expects no complaining on our part and offers no explanation on His part.
God must use us as He used His own Son Who said, “the
Son can do nothing of Himself”
and “I can of mine
own self do nothing”. Jesus was
“leaving you an
example for you to follow in His steps.”
So, for our New Year’s resolution, as
Paul said, let us determine only ONE THING: “I
count everything as loss compared to the possession of the priceless
privilege (the overwhelming preciousness, the surpassing worth, and supreme
advantage) of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord and of progressively
becoming more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him [of perceiving
and recognizing and understanding Him more fully and clearly]. … And that I
may actually be found and known as in Him, not having any
self-achieved righteousness that can be called my own, based on my obedience
to the Law's demands, but possessing that genuine righteousness which comes
through faith in Christ.
For my determined purpose
(New Year’s resolution)
is that I may know Him [that I may progressively become more deeply
and intimately acquainted with Him, perceiving and recognizing and
understanding the wonders of His Person more strongly and more clearly], and
that I may in that same way come to know the power outflowing from His
resurrection
(His life),
and that I may so share His sufferings as to be continually transformed in
spirit into His likeness.”
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