Personal change comes about more from believing who God is and what He has done and promised to do, than what we try to do to please Him.
This is the concept I tried to share with our men’s group last week. January is often the month when we review our lives and make new resolutions. However, if you are like the rest of us, you find that the resolutions dissolve away before we get to March.
Christians tend to make resolutions about praying more or reading the Bible more, or even reading the whole thing through in a year. Usually we end up feeling like failures when we approach life in this way. There’s no question that disciplined habits in the Christian life are essential and useful just as they are in any area of life. Being undisciplined is not a productive way to live. But where we go wrong, I think, is in thinking our efforts at being disciplined are going to increase our acceptability to God.
As I began this new year, I began to think about what it would take to have a greater delight in God and His Word so that my desire to read the Bible and pray would come from a delightful desire rather than a laborious duty. Job said, “I have treasured the words of His mouth more than my necessary food” Job 23:12. Jeremiah wrote, “Your words were found, and I ate them, and your word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart” Jeremiah 15:16.
So where does delight come from? How do we gain delight in something we have never seen, heard, or tasted before? If someone tells us of a delightful little restaurant on the edge of town, what has to take place for us to find it delightful as well? Don’t we have to go there and try it out?
In order for me to have a greater delight in God and in His Word, I need to taste it, not because I’m trying to follow some rule, but so that I can find the delight that Job, Jeremiah, and so many others have found. The Bible says, “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who trusts in Him!” Psalm 34:8.
Another part of the process is knowing and believing the promises that God has made toward me as one of His followers. When we think about and meditate on the promises of God, our motivation to dig deeper and know Him better increases, and our progress in the Christian life increases, not because of discipline itself, but from knowing and believing in who God is and what He has promised and done.
To wrap this up, here are some truths and promises Christians would do well to think about:
1 John 3:1 Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!
Romans 8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.
Colossians 1:12 The Father … has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light.
2 Corinthians 2:14 God…always leads us in triumph in Christ.
Philippians 2:13 God works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.
1 Corinthians 10:13 God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.
Ephesians 1:3 God…has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.
Psalm 103:12 As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.
Romans 8:26 For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us….