Resolution Power

~ Using The Will of Man To Do The Will of God ~

The Scriptures teach that God has given us many gifts with which to serve Him.  One of these is our will.

We often pray to God about a particular circumstance or forthcoming event, “Thy will be done,” and rightly so.  But when it comes to our own conduct, our manner of behavior, we do not usually pray like that because we understand God has made us free moral agents; we control our own behavior.  In a syndrome-seduced age when everything is blamed on compulsion, self-control is a forgotten idea.  But the fact remains: empowered by God’s grace, we can use our will as a rudder to guide our lives down a course honoring to Him.

How?  One way is through resolutions.  Not the insincere vapidities announced at the end of every year to tired choruses of “Auld Lang Syne,” but rather the intensely serious and carefully framed assertions of Christian purpose.

Biblically sound resolutions are the intentions of the renewed mind, those declarations of the heart which have the power to order our actions.  Such resolutions are like the coordinates on a map that we painstakingly pick, so that during our journey we can refer to them and verify that we are on target for our desired destination, which, for God’s child, is hearing his heavenly Father say, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant...enter thou into the joy of thy Lord” (Matthew 25:21).

When we set our will and resolve to honor Him—morally, professionally, whatever the endeavor—He keeps His promise of I Samuel 2:30, “Them that honor Me I will honor.” 

I am the New Year.  I am unused, unspotted, without blemish.  I stretch before you 365 days long.  I will present each day in its turn a new leaf in the book of your life for you to place your imprint upon it.

It remains for you to make of me what you will; if you write with firm, steady strokes, my pages will be joy to look upon when the next New Year comes.  If the pen falters, if uncertainty or doubt should mar the page, it will become a day to remember with pain.

I am the New Year.  Each hour of the 365 days I will give you sixty minutes that have never known the use of man.  White and pure I present them; it remains for you to fill each minute of them with sixty jeweled seconds of love, hope, endeavor, patience, and trust in God.

I am the New Year.  I am here but once—past, I can never be recalled.

Make me your best!

Reprinted from The Sword of the Lord

~ Robert Lloyd Russell, ABUNDANT LIFE NOW

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