New year’s resolutions.
Everyone makes them.
Lose weight, eat better, exercise more, spend less time on social media, spend more time with family, slow down, keep the house clean, save money… the resolution possibilities are endless.
I can guarantee you that the number one resolution Christians will make this year is to read their Bibles more and have a better prayer life.
I don’t think it’s bad to make a New Year’s resolution of any kind. We can all do better.
Plans and goals… those are good things.
And if I’m honest, I’ve set a few resolutions for myself this year.
Here’s where I have a problem.
I’ve come to despise the guilt associated with some things.
I have made many resolutions associated with my Christian walk and faith in the past.
I have resolved to read the entire Bible in one year…I’ve promised to have daily devotions every single day… I’ve made a pact with God that I would pray daily. I wouldn’t miss one day…
And then, I kept those resolutions for a very short time before I failed. I would miss one day and then another one. Finally, I would be so behind that I couldn’t catch up. And so, I would quit.
Every.Single.Year.
And I would feel like a complete failure. Because if I fail at losing weight, I fail myself. If I spend too much time on social media, I again fail myself.
So every resolution I make to better myself, and then I fail… well, really, the only person affected is me.
But, if I don’t read my Bible and pray more… that’s much worse because then I fail the Almighty God. My Christian walk begins to look like a sham. I’m a failure in the absolute most important aspect of my life.
When a person feels like a failure, they often quit trying. The following year it doesn’t even make sense to promise God that you will read your Bible every day because you know it’s a lie.
It’s a vicious, endless cycle.
Guilt upon guilt upon guilt.
And it’s not just my own guilt; for years, that guilt was piled upon me by Christian leaders in my life. So it wasn’t encouragement from those leaders but shame and guilt instead.
That isn’t right.
That isn’t ok.
I have years of spiritual scar tissue from that kind of thing.
What if the perspective could be changed? What if instead of making a New Year’s resolution to read the Bible more, we consciously decided to fall more in love with Jesus? What if we decided to get to know Him a little better each day? Not set a time limit or even a time a day… Not keep a checklist of days we remembered and days we forgot…
What if we have things all out of order? What if we are putting the cart before the horse? What if we are putting rules and guidelines where they don’t belong because, after all, what God truly desires is a relationship with us…
I remember when I first met Jeremy all those years ago. The more we talked, the more I wanted to talk to him. The more time we spent together, the more time I wanted to spend with him. The more I got to know him, the more I wanted to know about him.
I’m not saying that our relationship with God is the same as our human ones, but what I am saying is that God gave us those human attributes. He gave us our understanding of relationships, and He gave us the emotions we have. So why do we automatically assume that our relationship with Him is so much different?
If by spending more time with someone, we begin to want to spend more time with them, and that is the normal way things go… and if talking to someone more makes us want to talk to someone more is normal…
Let’s just think about it for a moment… God gave us those ways of knowing people, and He gave us those ways of starting and then maintaining relationships… so why do we believe that’s not how we get to know Him? Why do we put rules and regulations on it?
I don’t make New Year’s resolutions to talk to my husband daily. It’s just something I do naturally. I don’t make a checklist of how each day with my husband will go. He understands me. He loves me for who I am. We walk together through life, hand in hand… some days, we get along better than others; some days, we spend more time together. There are days when we are more intentional, and there are days when we are both just tired, and we don’t really communicate. Our relationship suffers when there is a lack of communication, and it’s imperative that we make that a priority… But Jeremy doesn’t love me any less when I have a bad day or a busy day.
Do we not think that God loves us all the more, that He understands us on a level we can’t even begin to comprehend?
What if this year, instead of setting unrealistic goals, we just decided to get to know our Lord and Savior more? What if, day by day, we spent more time with Him? And in doing that, we began to want to know even more about Him…
And what if we quit beating ourselves up and piling on guilt when we think we have failed?
I cannot imagine that God is keeping a list of days we read our Bible and days we don’t. I also can’t imagine that He wants us to read His word out of duty or pray to Him out of duty… He wants us to love Him so much that we want to do these things.
Maybe we have the cart before the horse.
Maybe we have made another spiritual checklist. More boxes to check. More ways to make Christianity into something it is not…
That’s not what a relationship looks like.
I have a pile of dated devotional books that I’ve never read. I have chronological Bibles that I’ve never finished… and maybe it’s all because my motivations were wrong. I wanted to do the right thing because it was the right thing, not because I just wanted to know God more.
It’s something to think about.
I’m trying something different this year. I purchased a set of Bible journals that aren’t dated. If I miss a day, it isn’t glaring back at me saying FAILURE… FAILURE… There isn’t any getting behind or catching up… It’s hopefully a realistic approach to deepening my relationship with God…
(I’ll add a link to those journals at the bottom of this post)
I’m excited to try something new… a different approach.
I want to spend more time with God this year. But I want to do it for the right reasons.
Will you join me?
Until Next Time,
Whitney
*** I do not receive compensation from links or products shared***
Love this!!
❤️❤️