2025 Week 02

Hello, Springers!

Blessed is the man who restarts devotions.

It’s a new year, and it’s the time of year when people make resolutions of all kinds. One person is going back to the gym. Another is going to learn guitar. Still another plans finally to read through the whole Bible in a year.

Resolutions are fun things to make, good things to keep, but bad things with which to anchor our self-worth. Thoughtful people will look back on 2024. One maxim of the 12-step community is “take a fearless moral inventory.” That is a wonderful instruction on how to look back. Wise people will look forward to 2025 and make some plans. An author I like encourages people to “claim your calendar before others do.” Choose for yourself with intentionality what you will do in 2025.

Your self-worth is not tied to your ability to keep a resolution. God has created you by his own sovereign will. What more do you need to know that you have worth? God has redeemed you at the price of the blood of his only Son. No broken resolution can take away your redemption in Christ. These truths should give us peace at the head of the year.

The peace brought by the twin truths of our creation and redemption should free us to dare greatly (borrowing a phrase from Teddy Roosevelt and Brené Brown). Daring greatly means you can make an audacious resolution and commit to keeping it.

But don’t strive in your own power.

Remember these words of Paul in Philippians 2:12-13: Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure. Or, as someone else has said, “Work like it all depends on you, but pray because it all depends on God.”

Strive in the power of God that is at work in you.

Or as Paul said in Colossian 1:29: For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.

I’ll talk more practically about resolutions to read the Bible and pray in Sunday School this week. We’ll look together at some tools that can help you as you begin the new year looking to grow in your walk with Christ.

Remember, our new Sunday School program begins at 9:00am with a place for all ages Nursery, Kids, Youth, and Adults.

Let’s grow together!

in Christ,

Pastor Tag