Of Rhythms of Grace (and New Year’s Resolutions)
Every year’s end brings with it a flood of memories – both good and bad – of what has happened in our lives this past 365 days. Joyful laughter with loved ones, hard times of grief and loss, rewarding senses of accomplishment, bitter moments of letdown and disappointment. All of these have been amply present in my 2024, and I know many of us are all-too-familiar with this range of experience. Throughout the roller coaster of this life, it is important for us as believers to remember our stability, our assurance, lies in something beyond the uncertainties of this volatile world: Christ and His finished work on the Cross (1 Corinthians 2:2).
While this is something we ought to hold onto every single day when we get up out of bed (Lamentations 3:22-23, Deuteronomy 6:4-9), the end of the year is certainly a great time to zoom out on our lives and consider such things on a grander scale, re-evaluating and re-prioritizing what we do and what we value in an over-arching sense. This is, of course, why New Year’s Resolutions are so popular… what better time to start an exciting, new endeavor than the start of an exciting, new year? For the Christian, then, this New Year provides a tremendous opportunity to step back, and re-center ourselves around Christ.
Well then, what does a Christ-centered commitment, or New Year’s Resolution, look like? Oftentimes, as Christians we will make resolutions to pray or read our Bible more, and while these are obviously great things to do, we often fall flat… and we do so for one particular reason: at their core, the resolution is simply to ‘try harder.’
Anything that’s rooted in just ‘extra effort’ is doomed to fail. Short-lived attempts to go to the gym, try a new diet, or pick up a hobby illustrate this point as well on the secular side of things. If there’s not a deeper motivation, a more innate urging, the resolution will be dropped as quickly as it was conceived. The same is true for Christ-centered commitments. We will never achieve our desired growth with God just by trying harder – remember the Gospel! If that’s not how we’re saved in Christ (Ephesians 2:8-9), that’s not how we’ll grow in Christ – so we must approach any New Year’s Resolutions from a different angle.
This is where we come back to the Cross. Remembering the Gospel; that God the Son came down into this world and was born of virgin, lived a perfect and sinless life, fulfilled the requirement of the Law for us, died the death we deserve and in so doing took the penalty for our sins and reconciled our relationship to the Father, that He was buried, conquered death in Resurrection, securing the gift of eternal life for us, and then ascended to the Right Hand of the Father where He now intercedes for us, and will one day return to judge the living and the dead (The Apostles’ Creed); THIS provides us our motivation. It’s not to ‘try harder,’ it’s a LOVE RESPONSE that overflows out of our very souls as we keep this Truth ever present in our minds and hearts.
Therefore, as we consider this coming year, let our resolutions be founded upon keeping this blessed Truth foremost in our minds and in our lives. Some different examples the Scriptures give us to remind ourselves of God’s work:
#1 – Fasting for the Sake of Godliness
This may be a rather foreign concept to many of us, as it’s a virtually extinct spiritual practice in the modern American church, but through the Scriptures fasting is seen everywhere. God instructed his prophets to fast many times in the Old Testament (2 Samuel 1:12; Ezra 8; Joel 1:14, 2:12-15; Zechariah 8:19) before they spoke His Words to the people, Esther fasted before she went in to make her bold request of King Xerxes (Esther 4:16), and Paul instructs the early church to do likewise (1 Corinthians 7:5). It is important to remember, however, that fasting is not an end in itself. We’re not denying ourselves of food to merely ‘show our devotion to God by doing a hard thing for him.’ Remember, this isn’t about self-effort! The point of fasting is to give up something we desire for a time, and fill that void with a focus on God. Prayer. Time in the Word. Simply praising Him and reflecting on His goodness and nature.
Fasting also doesn’t have to be from food either, though that is certainly the most common thing that Christians give up. In the modern day, a great thing to fast from would be social media, or even – let’s get really uncomfortable! – giving up your phone entirely for a period of time. When you feel that desire to check your feed, or listen to music, or to scroll through whatever, remember that Christ is the One Who is faithful to fulfill all of your needs and desires (Psalm 73:25-26). Your resolution is naturally up to you, and so a fast could look many different ways depending on your circumstance; you could fast from your phone one evening a week, fast from food 3 days a month, or something else that hits home for you. The point is to create a rhythm of regular appreciation and thanks to God for the things He’s given us, and to remember and be thankful for our dependence on Him!
#2 – Corporate Prayer
In the Book of Acts, the accounts of the early church are rife with the believers… 1) praying constantly and 2) praying together. In these prayers they would regularly pray for each other and pray through Scripture (Acts 4:23-31), reminding one another of God’s character and what He’d done, therein strengthening and encouraging one another.
A great thing to implement in this coming year is such corporate prayer in your household amongst your family. If you already pray together regularly, say before each meal, praise God! But consider another time of dedicated prayer, coming together as a family, to pray through God’s Word and remind each other of His awesome ways. We see how it impacted the early church. How would your family grow from another, regular time of prayer like this in 2025?
You can even get classical with it! Something my family does with regularity is we go through a book of liturgies, pre-written prayers with a call-and-response form to them. These were very popular in historical Christianity, but are no longer en vogue in the modern day. I’ve been very encouraged by these sorts of group prayers together with my family, and I’d strongly recommend you add it to your family’s rhythm of prayer.
#3 – Mission!
What better way to keep our hearts and minds stayed on the Gospel than to share it with others!? This is the natural response to Christ reconciling us to the Father – a desire to bring others into relationship with Him (Matthew 28:18-20). We just finished reading in the Christmas story about how the shepherds heard the good news – gos-pel! – that the angels told them, and immediately ran to Bethlehem and told everyone who would listen. As a church, we’ve emphasized Gospel as our annual core value this year, and there’s no better logical response than to subsequently go out and live missionally in our communities and social circles. But how might this particular Love Response look as a New Year’s Resolution, a regular rhythm to introduce into our lives in 2025?
First and foremost, we have regular missional opportunities at the church. Monthly serving at Grace Bridge, donations for Loving Lykins, and our upcoming Summer Mission trip to the Dominican Republic just scratch the surface of how we can impact our community in this coming year. We can commit to regular and joyful participation together as a body of believers in all these things and more! Something that was very impactful to my life, though, was making a habit of serving outside of church-sponsored programs.
At the beginning of our Junior year of High School, my friends from church and I decided to start volunteering at a local homeless shelter, The Samaritan’s Inn, over in McKinney. Every 3rd Saturday of the month, we’d get up early and arrive at 6:15am to serve breakfast at 6:30am, then clean up, wash all the dishes, and help them prep lunch. We’d usually be done by 10:00-10:30am or so. Additionally, we chose to sponsor the meal, which cost $180, split 6 ways amongst us, amounting to $30 given monthly by each of us. The youth group didn’t promote anything or financially support any part of it, we simply felt led to make this commitment ourselves, and we did so all the way up until the COVID-19 shutdowns at the end of our senior year.
I share this testimony from my own life to remind us that a rhythm of missional living doesn’t have involve traveling somewhere far away, being capable of great speeches, or making drastic changes to your life… sometimes it’s as straightforward as six, sleepy teenagers resolving to do something we weren’t accustomed to, once a month, to show the love of Christ to those around us. What might that look like in your family?
Final Thoughts
No matter what our 2024’s may have looked like, we know that our hope lies in Christ. From this foundation springs a love and joy that, God helping us, permeates every rhythm of our lives. May we take the coming of this new year to examine those rhythms, and resolve to make much of Christ in all of them. I briefly alluded to common, ‘secular’ New Year’s Resolutions earlier… since our old lives have been crucified with Christ and our new lives are not our own (Galatians 2:20), we understand that according to this Gospel nothing in our lives is secular! Perhaps Paul’s reminder that we are not our own, and that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, is your motivation to be a good caretaker of that temple, going to the gym, eating healthier, etc., as an act of worship and a love response to His amazing Love.
Or perhaps it does look like introducing a regular rhythm of fasting, prayer, or missions, out of Gospel Gratitude for what He’s done. Whatever may lie in store for you and your family this coming year, may we all remember the amazing work God has done for us in the person and work of Jesus Christ, and let that shape our lives in 2025 and beyond.