And you might think you’re a complete failure.
But this time? This time it really could be different. 2024 is a new start.
This year of new days? This could be the year we put the brakes on the shame, and let go of the anxiety about what’s ahead.
There’s a better way to a new you. It doesn’t begin with a list of promises you’ve made to yourself, but a list of promises already fulfilled for you. For you!
God made the resolution — to save a weary world — and He kept it. He’s the only God who keeps His promises, and then doesn’t require you to add to it — only to RECEIVE it.
Your resolution is the gift of Christmas, pouring itself out across your coming year. It is the one box on your to-do list that you can mark “already finished” before the new year begins.
You have already been equipped for the good works God has for you in 2024. These are good works designed with you in mind, not “good works” that the enemy might use as a scorecard to prove that you’ve failed again.
Resolutions, like laws, can try to make you obey. But laws and resolutions can’t make you good. You are good, because you are God’s. And because you are God’s, you are being changed in ways that you can’t measure on your bathroom scale.
What if we refused to let 2023 define us? And what if we refuse to let 2024 taunt us?
What if we said “yes” to the one resolution that can change our year and our life?
This year, on the lined paper where I will ink my resolutions, I’ll write the name of Jesus Christ. He is my resolution.
You don’t have to try harder, friend. Your New Year promises can be more than resolutions. They can be complete revolutions, a complete turning around to Jesus and His already-finished promises, tied like a string around your heart.
Sure lose weight, if you need to. But rather than focusing on the number on the scale, maybe we could all lose the weight that is really dragging us down — the weight of guilt or the shame of our own broken promises, the weight of worry over the unknown in the coming year. “Let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up,” wrote the author of Hebrews 12.
Make your plans, but hold them loosely. The possibilities for your one beautiful life are limited only by the size of your God, who has great plans for you and has already resolved to carry you through them.
The wind may howl and growl in the pitch of December. But look east to the line where the earth touches sky. The very thing that is beyond your control? It is bigger than your fear, stronger than your own might, more effective than your best-laid plans. And it is rising, fearlessly, into your world — Light.
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This post originally appeared at JenniferDukesLee.com.
