I have failed at many a resolution: to be more organized, wake up earlier, be more consistent with discipline, do the dishes immediately after each meal (after all it is much easier right away than after the food is dry and crusted on to the dishes), to exercise more, eat less, memorize more Scripture, pray more, to not be angry, not gossip, encourage others, write more letters...Oh the list could go on and on! How flawed I am! How flawed we all are and how inept to change. So this year its going to be different right? Maybe!
Maybe it will be different if I put my hope not in my "gumption" but in the One who has the power to change even this stubborn, proud heart. My plan is to depend, depend on Jesus! My plan is to immerse myself in Him and grow in love for Him and allow the Holy Spirit to conform me into His image. Because my ultimate resolution is to be like Jesus! And that's a good one, because I know from Scripture that the God who created the universe and everything in it wants me to be like Jesus too. And I may not accomplish all of my purposes, but He accomplishes His!
So the theme of the year for the Haygoods will be learning about and loving Jesus though His Word and godly men's books. I am so thankful for the leadership of Chad in this area. He picked out a reading plan and asked me to do the same. I am using For the Love of God by DA Carson. It is a book that gives you a reading assignment each day from the Bible (example Jan 1 is Gen 1, Matt 1, Ezra 1, and Acts 1) and also a single page "commentary" on one of the chapters. At the end of the year you read through the Psalms and NT twice and the Old Testament once. I have already enjoyed it immensely and I love knowing ahead of time what I am going to do in my time with God. Chad also asked me to read through Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion with him. I am intimidated by it but I have a really smart guy who works in my basement, and he doesn't mind for me to ask him questions. :) My final reading goal is to finish the books I have started before reading others. I was in the middle of Kisses from Katie, Loving the Little Years, and The Hiding Place! I finished Kisses from Katie a couple of days ago because I only had 3 chapters left. Read it my friends!!! Hopefully the others will be complete soon!
So I am back here on the trying side of things, the working hard at it side of things, and I know in my own strength I will fail. But when I am weak, He is Strong! My only hope is that God will help me. Since I do believe my resolutions are honoring to Him and will increase my love for Jesus I am going to strive with all my might and depend on Him with all my might!
Here's to a year of learning about and loving Jesus! And to living a life that proclaims to the world how weak I am and how strong He is!
For what is more consonant with faith than to recognize that we are naked of all virtue, in order to be clothed by God? That we are empty of all good, to be filled by him? That we are slaves of sin, to be feed by him? Blind, to be illumined by him? Lame, to be made straight by him? Weak, to be sustained by him? To take away from us all occasion for glorying, that he alone may stand forth gloriously and we glory in him? --Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion
