By Elizabeth M. Role, PhD Mathematics
What does new year mean to you, calendar changing or life changing? The major reason why we make new year’s resolutions is because we want to make a commitment to significantly change our life. I suggest four commitments that God in His Word encourages you to make at the start of 2022 that could become the gateway for you and me to have a better life.
Commit yourself to forget your failures. Paul gave this advice “Forgetting what is behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on towards the goal for which God has called me heavenwards in Christ Jesus” (Phil 3:13-14). All of us have failed in some way in our lives over the last year. For many of us our failures are painful memories. This new year is a good time to stop being chained to our past failures. What God’s Word is saying is that we should not dwell on our past so that it stops us from moving forward into the future that God has for us.
Commit yourself to give up your grudges. A grudge is a deep ongoing resentment that we cultivate in our hearts against someone else that leads to unforgiving attitudes and unforgiving actions. Grudges are dangerous. They not only destroy marriages, break up families, ruin friendships, or split churches, they also make us a bitter and twisted person and destroy us physically, emotionally, and spiritually. According to God’s Word the way to give up a grudge is to forgive a grievance. “Bear with each other and forgive each other whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you” (Col 3:13).
What better time to make the decision to forgive than the start of a new year?
Commit yourself to restore your relationships. “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone” (Romans 12:18).The Lord wants us to do everything we can to restore any relationships that have gone wrong in our life. If we have caused a rift in a relationship, then we have a responsibility to do everything we can to restore it. This new year is the right time to restore the relationship we ruined by asking forgiveness from the one we have hurt.
Commit yourself to turn back on our transgressions. “Do not let sin control the way you live, do not give in to its lustful desires … we are no longer slaves to sin” (Rom. 6:12, 14). Do you have besetting sins that you are prone to doing time and time again?Do you have a quick temper that you constantly give into?Do you havea caustic tongue that loves to assassinate other people’s characters or wound their feelings? Have you learned to live with that critical judgmental attitude you know is wrong? God’s word challenges you to stop letting that sin control the way you live. Jesus’ death broke the power of sin and if we surrender our life to Him, the Holy Spirit will give us the power to resist our besetting sins and become victorious.
Let us ask God to grant us the power through the Holy Spirit to make these four commitments so that the year 2022 will not be just a calendar-changing event for you and me but a life-changing event that will make our homes, our communities, our workplaces, and our church better places to be and that will prepare us for the earth made new.
