I am going to add another relevant word to your New Year’s repertoire.  Let’s call it a precursor to a resolution . . . and being a preacher . . . a reverend if you will, trained to sacrifice the message for the sake of alliteration . . . drum roll . . . “Realization”!!!  Yes, a New Year’s Realization!  Basically I am saying that resolutions may be better if they are better informed.  Now there are some that I know who, many New Years ago, resolved to never make New Year’s Resolutions.  That’s safe . . . and fatalistic . . . grim even.

I think this New Year, it might help us to Realize:

  • Much of what we resolve annually has never been resolved.  Look at your list and ask yourself how many times we have already resolved to do this and so far, . . . no resolution.  We’re like Mick Jagger . . . “I can’t get no . . . resolution.”
  • We are living in a broken world and all of us are somehow broken.  Does your list contain items that relate to people’s perceptions of you or do they address the substantial issues of your life, regardless of what people may think?  For instance, health issues may be a better motivation for weight loss than beauty.  There are people who love you and want you around for as long as possible, whether you are a size “2” or “12”.
  • Don’t look for other people to change their ways to support your initiatives.  Someone else in your home is still going to want to buy chips in 2011.  They’ll be there in the cupboard whispering to you . . . and until you can learn to live in the house with them you’ll never learn to live without them.
  • It is better to add significant things to your life than to become obsessed with taking things away.  What we do necessitates what we do without.  As one of our heralded Canadian Olympians about the rigors of their training program.  What they chose to do, several years before doing it, automatically made other decisions for them.  In all of life, it is what you do that will change the world, not what you stop doing.  This is especially true in the Christian life.
  • One more . . . prayerfully ask what you might do to bring the greatest glory to God through your living.  Perhaps that might be a great resolution in itself . . . to live in such a way that you would bring God glory.  You see, if God is not a part of making the goal, He is not likely to be part of realizing it.  In the end, it will be His call anyway.  What He has to say in the final analysis trumps what anyone else has to say.

Remember, the scripture tells us that we are not our own, we are “bought with a price” (1 Cor. 6:20,21).  Aligning ourselves with the Purposes for which we are created is a lifetime pursuit requiring regular adjustments in the ways we see the world around us and the part that God has for reach of us to play . . . now there’s a New Year’s Realization for you.