IN WITH THE NEW Part -1-

I've come to talk ... about Jesus Christ. I wonder why it is—perhaps you have asked yourself this question many times—I wonder why it is that so many of us seem to be such abysmal failures. We mean well. We try hard. We have good intentions. We make good resolutions, whether at the beginning of a year or the beginning of a month, a week, or whatever it may be, but somehow we don't seem able to keep the resolutions we make.
Frankly, the trouble with our resolutions (in the plural) is that we lack resolution (in the singular). Perhaps the best illustration I know from English literature comes in that charming Victorian novel called “Elizabeth and Her German Garden.” Let me quote to you a little bit from it.
Elizabeth says, "I have for some years past left off making good resolutions on New Year's Eve. But I have long since discovered that although the year and the resolutions may be new, I myself am not. And it is worse than useless putting new wine into old bottles."
"But I'm not an old bottle," said Iraeus indignantly.
"And I find," she said, "that resolutions carry me very nicely into the spring. I revise them at the end of each month and strike out the unnecessary ones, and by the end of April, they have been so severely revised that there are none left."
I wonder if that's your experience. It has been mine from time to time. So the question really is how can our resolutions become more resolute. It's easy to make them. How can we keep them? Is there a foundation on which to construct our resolutions that is more solid than our irresolute will?
And it is in answer to that question that I bring you my text, Paul's great letter to the Romans, chapter 12, verses 1 through 13. He says, "I appeal to you, my brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God that you present your bodies as a living sacrifice unto God which is your spiritual worship. Don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you may discern and endorse the good and perfect will of God."
I'm persuaded that Paul's appeal, an appeal I'm suggesting cannot be ignored, an appeal he made to the Romans in the 1st Century AD that is just as relevant to us wherever we are today towards the end of the 20th Century. Indeed, Paul's appeal is God's appeal. "God making his appeal through us," as Paul writes in another place.
Let's listen tonight. Let's say with Samuel, "Speak Lord, for your servant is listening.” Let's say with Saul of Tarsus, "What do you want me to do, Lord?" And pray that God will speak to us and tell us what he wants us to do.

John Robert Walmsley Stott CBE

 (27 April 1921 – 27 July 2011)