A NEW RESOLVE FOR A NEW YEAR? 2014

A NEW RESOLVE FOR A NEW YEAR?

2014

Culture has convinced us that we should begin a New Year with another resolution. After all, it’s a time to start over and begin a year fresh and new-the past year’s junk is over and we can start with a clean slate! Whether it’s a new weight loss program, a physical fitness regimen, a line of prophetic decrees about what we are going to do for God in the next year, or planning a new budget, we find it exhilarating to go through this process again and again, year after year. However, it seems that the months manage to pass us by in the “new year” and we see little or no progress as the result of our efforts and decrees. 

You see, the biggest struggle we have is within our inner man. We battle our weight, our minds, people, the enemy’s camp, our this or our that, on and on,  but Jesus said the Kingdom of God is within you. Therefore, to gain spiritual ground we really must examine ourselves inwardly before we can see life and change manifest outwardly!  (Luke 17:21) 

Rather than make another failed resolution, I propose a great way to start the New Year off would be to examine those areas you struggle with the most and surrender them to God! By doing so, you are recognizing His Lordship over your life and invite the presence and power of His Spirit to bring about His perfect will; not yours. Pray for wisdom and direction from Him as to what you need to do to change some things. Maybe it is your perspective He wants you to change or a wrong attitude. Maybe your paradigm for ministry is off and He wants to show you a Biblical pattern that will bring about success. Only He knows what it is but He won’t tell you unless you humble yourself and ask! (James 4: 2)

You see, the enemy gets on board only if we struggle to change or see certain things come to pass in our own strength then laughs us to scorn. Afterwards, we fall into patterns of frustration, guilt and many times torment because we “failed again.” Worse yet, is when we deceive ourselves into thinking that it will eventually happen if I just keep at it long enough! When we start rebuking the devil and warring principalities rather than doing some self-examination we become an open target for the enemies fiery darts that he loves to hurl at God’s children. 

If we are honest with ourselves and with God, we need to assess where we are then take a good look within from time to time in order to recognize what's really going on in our hearts. Our heart attitudes and mindsets will determine what successes we do or don’t see.  

“My beloved, I desire above all that you prosper and be in health as your soul prospers.” 3 John 2

“Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” Proverbs 4: 23

Many times our struggle is because the Spirit of God within is calling us to find and do the Father's will versus what our flesh wants to do. Thus, the battle ends when we raise the white flag to Jesus in full surrender and say, "Not my will but yours be done, Oh Lord!" Then the next step is a step of faith....

Before King David went out to fight a battle he always inquired of the Lord first to get the mind of the Holy Spirit (see 2 Samuel 2: 1; 2 Samuel 5: 19; 1 Samuel 30:8). The Lord gave him direction as to what to do. As he did this, he was always victorious. The one time he stayed behind when he should have been out to war cost him dearly. He decided to flesh out and ‘relax’ a bit. This is when he got into big trouble with Bathsheba then plotted to have her husband Uriah killed…

“In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king’s men and the whole Israelite army. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained in Jerusalem. One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful, and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, “She is Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite.” Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her. (Now she was purifying herself from her monthly uncleanness.) Then she went back home. The woman conceived and sent word to David, saying, “I am pregnant.” (2 Samuel 11: 1-5)

When we are born again, our spirit man has been re-created into God’s image and likeness. The Bible says that when we were dead (spiritually) in our trespasses and sins, Christ died for us. After you get saved from your sins, you still live in a mortal body and possess a soul comprised of the mind, will and emotions. Much of the struggle in our Christian walk is learning to take and keep authority over our inner man (soul) and cause him/ her to become subject to the Word of God and the leading of the Holy Spirit verses what our natural senses and appetites dictate. Without doing this, we easily fall back into our sinful past and ways.

Paul describes this struggle perfectly in Romans Chapter 7. I am highlighting Romans 7: 18-25 & Romans 8: 1-4 together because there were no chapters and versus in the original text.  They were placed into the text when the Bible went to print in the 1500’s. Romans 8 completes the thought of Romans 7 and shows us the key to living and walking in the Spirit... Walking in the Spirit and being controlled by Him rather than our fleshly desires and emotions is the Key to living condemnation free from the devil. Walking in the spirit is an exercise to live by as a born again Child of God. We all need to learn and grow in this area of controlling our fleshly appetites and desires by walking in the spirit!

"For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin." Romans 7: 18-25

"Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit." Romans 8: 1

You see, trying to resolve ourselves to do something new is a noble thought. However, the fact of the matter is that in our flesh dwells no good thing. Therefore, it is the Spirit that gives us life, not the flesh!  Self-help will only lead to more failure unless we understand that we live, move and have our being in Him. Our spirit might be willing but the flesh is truly weak. By the power of the Holy Spirit and Spirit led living, surrender and obedience becomes the key to victory; not a New Year resolution!

Yours in the Journey

Mary Ann Wray