New Year’s Resolutions and Other Fallacies

Posted on February 20, 2008
Filed Under Goals, Grace |

Discipline. That was the word in my Spirit at the beginning of this new year and 51 days into it I’m beginning to feel like my life has been an exercise of everything but. And, speaking of exercise . . . well, you can see where this is going.

I said that I would be diligent in writing and it wasn’t until this morning as I went online looking for a Bible study that I could actually buy into that I realized it was my own writing, musings, and insights that I miss and from which I encouraged my own spirit. I said that I would exercise at LEAST four times weekly and instead it’s been four weeks since I’ve done that. I said that I’d practice piano for 30 minutes daily and - oh, go ahead and guess.

There were also things that I said I would NOT do that I find myself still religiously devoted to . . . like the gossip website that I check daily just to find out the latest on Britney only to feel like I need a shower afterwards. (Man, that took transparency to write. Yay. And, yuck!)

Good grief. What is wrong with me?

Romans 7:18-20

I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

I very much feel like Paul when he goes on to cry out “What a wretched man am I!?!?!?” Who shall rescue me indeed.

So, not to change the subject or anything, but I think there is a new, or at least additional word in me, and that is grace. Yes, I’m going to make a new effort at embracing this discipline thing . . . the tightness in my jeans mandate it. But I am also going to try to marry that thing to grace - not so that “sin” can abound in my life (I need to give up the gossip page - I really do - I really am), but so that I don’t carry the guilt of yesterday’s misstep into today. (So what I didn’t write yesterday, I am right now, right? And, I just may tomorrow.)

I’m trying to live in the balance of who I am and who I yet desire to be. I don’t know that the cross-section of those two ideas meet with any regularity, but I’m looking for the intersection. Discipline and grace. I’ll let you know how I do, okay?

Peace and Blessings,