Resolution or Response?

Do you set New Years' resolutions each year? If you do, how successful have you been in the past at keeping all of them? I don't have any statistics in front of me but I'm pretty sure that around 99.9% of all people fail to keep their New Years' resolutions for the whole year.

Now I don't really have a problem with failed resolutions because the concept of a resolution is inherently flawed from the very beginning. You see, when we make resolutions we are limiting the amount of good and growth we want in our lives. There is set starting point and oftentimes a set ending point. We make a list of what we want to do and many times that list becomes an idol for us, one that we bow down to daily and sacrifice to when we fall behind. I'm not saying that desiring to lose weight or read through the Bible in a year or quitting a bad habit is wrong. But why pick a specific start date for that to happen? Why not start when you are drawn to the need in the first place?

God places things on our hearts all the time. He does this not so that we can pick an arbitrary starting point in the future but so that we can respond now. If I realize on July 27 that I wish to read through the Bible in a year, I could wait until January 1 to begin since that's a neat starting point, or I can begin on July 27. When I realize I need to lose weight, then it's something I need to consider doing now, not at some convenient point in the future.

My whole point is not to dog any of you who have made New Years' resolutions. If you have, then my hope is that you will have great success and enjoy tremendous strides in your life this year. But my sincere encouragement for you (and myself) would be that we would be sensitive to the voice of God daily and respond to Him when He speaks into our lives. The time is now to move in the direction of God.