New Year/New You

Welcome to 2018!

I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for a new year. Last year was tough personally, weird politically, and seemed to slowly move forward. This year, I’m ready to hit the reset button. I’m ready to kick start my resolutions and start working on the new me in this new year! Most of my resolutions are the normal ones: Getting serious about my physical health by eating right and being more active, deepening my relationship with Jesus and ending some bad habits that I’ve developed along the way, spending more quality time with my wife and family, etc.

While these are good goals, I never really fulfill them. I never really accomplish all that I set out to do in a new year and every year I’m hitting the reset button, reestablishing resolutions, and starting up that repetition again. I wonder if the reason why I constantly have to repeat this same cycle, year in and year out, is that I never really change. Maybe instead of making resolutions, I should start resting in the strength and ability of God.

Is that true of you today? 
Do you constantly repeat the same cycle of goals every year only to fail throughout the new year and then repeat your resolution again and again?
Do you really want to be new?

Jesus wants to make you new. He wants this year to be the start of the new you that He always intended on you becoming. There is a catch though, instead of striving to make yourself new through your own efforts and will-power, rather you have to allow Jesus to make you new.

The way you do this is by simply believe in your heart and admit to yourself that He is Lord and allow Him to lead your life from this moment forward, then you will be entirely and instantaneously made new!

“If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”
Romans 10:9

Once you enter into a relationship with Jesus, then you are made new! The Bible says that “if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old is gone, the new is here!” (2 Cor. 5:17).

Now that’s a goal I could get behind! Stop making endless resolutions and start building into your relationship with Jesus that will make you brand new now and forever more.

If you want that, then just say this short prayer:

God, I admit to you that I’ve been trying to do this whole life thing on my own and I am failing at it. I know I have messed up, that I have sinned, and that I’ve not followed you. I want to start doing that now though. I want to be made new. I want to stop trying to do everything within my own power and start resting in my relationship with you.
I ask you come into my heart and life. Remove whatever should not be in my life and fill that space with your presence. Make me new and help me to follow you.
-Amen

If you prayed that prayer, welcome to the family of God and to your new self! Way to go! Have a great 2018! I assure you that with this new year, you will be a new person if simply follow Jesus and allow Him to keep making new throughout this year.