What's Your Problem?

It seems this time of year everyone starts focusing on improvement.  As we close out the old year and usher in the new, our hope is replenished with a new drive to be better than we have been before.  We start noticing that we eat too much junk food, watch too much television, spend too little time with our children, focus on the negative too often and so we start developing a plan to resolve these issues.

We buy health food and exercise equipment, turn the television off and play a board game instead, and bask in the day's achievement.

Then next week rolls around and the kids are back in school and we have returned to our regular busy work schedule and a healthy meal is out of reach when McDonald's is around the corner.  The day has exhausted us and the new episode of our favorite show beckons us to cozy up on the couch with some potato chips.  Enter negativity as we nurse feelings of defeat and self-loathing.

We have all been there to some degree, whether it was a failed New Year's Resolution or some other aspiration.  Sometimes it seems best to not resolve to fix anything, rather than end up disappointed.  Or to resolve to accept defeat gracefully and not beat yourself up over it.

So what's your problem?  What are you striving to improve?  Is there any hope that you will not be making the same resolution next year when we welcome 2012?  I have never been one to make New Year's Resolutions.  I do not like the feeling of failure and so I err on the side of caution.  If I make improvements on my own that can be commended at the end of the year, so be it, but I am not committing myself to anything on paper.  I have never felt shame in admitting that either.  I always prided myself in not getting caught up in the sensationalism of the new year.  After all, if you over-indulged your sweet tooth at Christmas, self-control is likely to be just as elusive a week later.  I am not in the business of fooling myself.

So, I left my self-improvement goals to be made later in the year, as I felt inspired.  It seemed to me I would be more likely to succeed if I had a life-changing moment that lead me to turn the television off and put down the chocolate bar.  The turning of a new year is the flip of a calendar- hardly life-changing.   But these cathartic moments have been few and far between, leaving me to accepting the same old Katie with the same old bad habits year after year.

However, this new year pressing in on me has felt different.  I feel like God is calling me to a higher standard for myself.  Christianity is not all about God revealing in drastic ways the things I need to change in my life.  Rather He is asking me to be committed enough to Him to daily examine myself and ask for His guidance in removing and improving the faults that keep me from following Him.  I know the area I most need to improve upon is my prayer life.  And as I say that, I realize I started off this blog entry without saying a prayer first (no wonder it has been such a struggle to write).  I do not spend enough quiet time with God and it is ever apparent to me that life would be so much easier if I did.  So there is my New Year's Resolution- to have a committed prayer life where I daily spend time in prayer focused on God revealing His will for my life.

What is my hope in keeping my resolution?  Psalm 25:3 promises, "No one whose hope is in you will ever be put to shame."  My hope is in the Lord's faithfulness, not my own.  I know that his mercies are new with every morning, and when I fail Him, He will not fail me.

Whatever your resolution this year, commit it to God.  He is the great resolver of all things.  He is in the business of making all things new.  His faithfulness to you will far outlast your faithfulness to yourself.