Never Give Up!
It’s the middle of January!! How are you doing on those New Year’s resolutions? Are you still going to the gym? Losing weight? Being sweet to your husband and mom? Have you kept those credit cards effectively hidden? Are you purposefully reading your Bible every day?
If you are anything at all like me ... this is the week that you lose the momentum concerning your New Year’s resolutions. Mid-January is when our determination melts away into forgetfulness and half-hearted compliance.
Allow me to remind you that the word “resolution” comes from the word “resolve” which means: to come to a determination; to come to a definite or earnest determination about something; firmness or purpose of intent; to follow a course of action.
When you decided, the last week of December, to follow certain New Year’s resolutions, you came to a definite and earnest determination that you were not going to give up or be side-tracked. You firmly purposed the solid intent to follow a particular course of action.
Don’t give up!! If you have missed a couple of days ... start again today!
If you have said the wrong thing to your husband or were short with your mother ... ask for forgiveness and move ahead into kindness and tenderhearted living.
If you took those dastardly credit cards out of hiding and used them to fulfill some momentary desire, put them away! Far away!! Some of you may just want to cut up those credit cards and render them powerless in your life.
Unfortunately, our human response to losing momentum is simply giving up. I have a few words for you today: Never, never, never give up!
If you haven’t gone to the gym for the past 4 days, you can still go today and again tomorrow and surely for the rest of the week. If you have blown your resolution to not eat sugar in the month of January, today is a new day! Today is a brand new opportunity to pray for strength and to ask God to give you the focus concerning your new and healthier eating habits.
Will you join me in resolving to resolve again? Will you search your heart, repent for your lack of discipline and then pray that God will give you the strength to be a healthier, kinder, more disciplined version of yourself in 2013?
It has been my experience that my resolutions are never fulfilled unless I couple my annual resolve with daily and heartfelt prayer. Every day, I pray that God would give me the strength to help me make healthy and righteous decisions in both the big things and in the small things in my life.
I believe that in your daily resolve lies your greatness. It is up to you to pull out the weeds of compromise and weakness, of mediocrity and selfish thinking around that seed of greatness. It is up to you to fertilize your potential of living a truly great life, which lies in your resolve, with big dreams and both short term and long term goals.
Every day is a gift ... an extraordinary gift from heaven. There is no such thing as a bad day or even an ordinary day. Resolve today that your New Year’s resolutions will not fade into the cemetery of out-dated goals and dreams that never came true.
Determine with passion and with action that you will stay the course and be the person that you have always wanted to be! Pray when you feel your weakest and try again. Again and again and again.
Ask God to give you His strength as you set your face like flint to stay the course with determination and with the power of heaven coursing through your human veins.
The good news is this: God didn’t promise that His mercies were only new every January. God promised that every day was a new day ... a new opportunity to try again ... a new chance to be filled with His great power.
“The Lord’s loving kindnesses indeed never cease; for His compassions never fail: They are new every morning, great is Your faithfulness, Oh Lord!” - Lamentations 3:22 & 23.
