Making new resolutions with God
AS we continue to ‘Come to ourselves in 2023’, this week Women and Faith is pleased to share an inspired approach by a dear sister friend, Anna Brown, on how to do new year resolutions with God’s help. Brown is a devoted daughter of God, homeschool educator, wife and mother. Below is her testimony and strategy.
“If you make new year resolutions you probably know from experience that we are powerless to keep them for 365 days — willpower goes only so far. Maybe you stopped making new year resolutions altogether. I did for a few years. But I would like to share two things:
A) What the Lord told me to do in January 2022, and
B) My personal testimony of what happened when I did.
As I contemplated new year resolutions last year I struggled with fear that I would fail to keep my resolutions, fear that the accuser would beat me down when I failed, and felt frustration with myself at the many things that I needed to change about me.
I spoke to the Lord about it. Below is what the conversation could have sounded like and the steps He told me to write down.
The Lord: You keep getting frustrated with yourself because you are trying to change everything that is wrong with you all at once.
One thing at a time.
Me: OK. I will make only one resolution.
The Lord: No. You have been controlling the process with limited results. Give me the process.
Me: ??
The Lord: I know what I want to change in you. Ask me!
Me: Oookaaay… Holy Spirit, show me what you want to change in me.
The Lord: Prepare to wait and listen for my answer. I will tell you. I will identify a mindset/approach/ belief that I want you to leave behind in the old year and I will give you something different to take forward with you into the new year.
Me: I never thought of that before! Whoa!!! I might fail less with that approach!
The Lord: When you controlled the process, at the start of the year the accuser used to whisper to you: “Don’t make any resolutions because you won’t keep them anyway!”, or he’d wait ‘til February or March to show the evidence you that you fell off and to condemn you for it. I don’t condemn you when you fail but (.) I also don’t leave you to achieve your resolution all by yourself. Stop behaving as if you have to accomplish this alone in your strength!
Colossians 1:29 “For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.”
As I thought and talked it through with the Lord, He showed me a couple of things and I wrote them down. Notice who does what in each step:
1) The Holy Spirit reveals what he wants me to consciously submit to the throne for help to change.
2) The Holy Spirit shows me practical steps to take to be different.
3) I resolve. I make the “new year resolution”. (He wanted me to write it down.)
4) I toil. I work. I take the steps he revealed, so I can be different.
5) I toil. Taking those steps with Jesus’s energy, the power to be different is not from my will but what Christ has done on the cross. This is more than willpower.
6) The Spirit does not sit idly by watching me. Instead, as I toil, the Holy Spirit powerfully works within me.
7) I praise. As the Holy Spirit changes me and I see the change, I praise the God who made the change possible.
Those are the steps I got.
The Lord: Be patient with yourself. You had years of practice your way so you will need time to practise my way. It will be new but I will help you.
Me: Thank you for saying that. I forget that too often!
The Lord: When you do mess up, my darling, confess your sin. Christ died for that too! Receive my forgiveness. Condemnation is not from me. When you or others see a change in you, praise me.
Me: Wow!! I guess sometimes I fail to receive the forgiveness You give. And I forget to praise when it goes well!
The Lord: “Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert... I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people, the people whom I formed for myself that they might declare my praise.” Isaiah 43:18-21