HAPPY NEW YEAR

With Christmas behind us we are embarking on a new year.  It is a time of transition where we transition from one year to another.  Depending on who you are the New Year can be a time filled with great possibilities or great regrets.  For some it is a time to party and watch a giant ball drop from the sky.  For others it is about traditions built on superstition such as cooking black eyed peas for good luck and collard greens for money or doing all your cleaning and washing before the New Year or else you will be cleaning and washing all year long in the new coming year. 

Many end one year and begin the new with New Year’s Resolutions.  Many make resolutions to lose weight, quit smoking and/or drinking.  Some make resolutions to get out of debt and save more money.  Others make resolutions to move on from relationships that are not working out or that are destructive or unhealthy in some way.  It is believed that New Year’s Resolutions began with the Babylonians.  They have the earliest recorded history of New Year’s Resolutions, which was a time for them to return borrowed farm equipment.  But for our modern western world it has become a time to make all sorts of declarations of how we are going to build new and better, healthier habits and how we are going to do better in various areas of our lives, but many fail to fully commit to what they have declared so fervently. 

Every culture has its New Year’s Resolution traditions; from Asia to Spain to Greece and from London to Canada and everywhere in between.  Many of them are traditional, some full of meaning, but the common thread that runs through them all is that it is a time of doing away with, putting an end to, or forgetting the old and welcoming and embracing the new.  It is important to understand that New Years is not about partying or observing superstitious traditions; these things have no significance and add nothing to our lives.  Whether you wash and clean everything before the New Year or not will not prevent you from cleaning and washing during the new coming year because living necessitates cleaning and washing. 

The word, resolution, means to be firmly determined; to have a firm resolve and commitment to in making a decision.  Instead of making frivolous resolutions about things we are not fully committed to, the New Year should be a time of serious self reflection to take inventory in a determination of where we stand in life in comparison to where we should be according to God’s purpose and will for our individual lives.

The New Year is a time to make a decision to be a better person, not according to the world’s standards, but according to God’s, which can only be accomplished by allowing Christ to reign in us [Gal. 5:16-17]. We should make a decision to be the fruit tree God has purposed us to be according to Gal. 5:22-23. We should make a decision to be abundant in forgiveness in our relationships. We should make a decision to yield ourselves to God that He may heal all the broken & bruised places of our lives so that we don’t continue to attract that which is destructive in our lives. We should make a decision to walk humbly before the Lord and not yield to the attractiveness of pride. We should make a decision to listen more than we speak. We should make a decision to live for God and not perform for man. And when all of these decisions have been made we should breathe a word of prayer that God would bring these decisions we have made back to our remembrance everyday that we would adhere to them and be the witnesses of Christ we have been placed here in the earth to be.

So, this New Years as we transition from 2011 to 2012 don’t make a New Year’s Resolution as you have in the past.  Make a life decision, not to be the best you that you can be, but to be the you that God created you to be by committing your life to Him and making a decision everyday to live according to His principles.  Live in step with the Sprit (the Holy Spirit) by keeping in step with the Spirit by adhering to his voice in you [Gal. 5:25].  The Spirit of God will not lead you astray, but into all truth causing you to live a life pleasing to God [John 16:13].

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!  Cross over into 2012 with a resolve to live for Christ.  May you experience Christ this year and every day for the rest of your life building relationship with him that he might be glorified through your life living.

-          Dr. DeShonda Bailey

 

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