mgpcpastor's blog

Lots of thoughts about the future with advice about purposeful growing in godliness.

Firstly, Ray Ortlund:
The path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day. Proverbs 4:18
In this new year of grace, A.D. 2010, everything — everything — will work together for our good. Romans 8:28 is not trite. Good, as defined by the gospel, is the deepest narrative, the most inexorable outcome, of our lives. This assurance does not absolve us of responsibility. But sovereign grace meets original sin, and wins.
It’s going to be okay. God be praised.

Ortlund also provides five areas in which we should all be prepared “If, in 2010, we die.”
Read the post for his thoughts on these: ‘let’s die fully reconciled’; ‘let’s die fully consecrated’ ; ‘let’s die fully forgiven’; ‘let’s die in sweetness’; and ‘let’s die in purity’.

Lists are very prevalent, but useful.

John Piper provides “10 Resolutions For Mental Health” which he first heard during a lecture by Clyde Kilby.
These include: ‘I shall not demean my own uniqueness by envy of others. I shall stop boring into myself to discover what psychological or social categories I might belong to. Mostly I shall simply forget about myself and do my work’ and ‘Instead of the accustomed idea of a mindless and endless evolutionary change to which we can neither add nor subtract, I shall suppose the universe guided by an Intelligence which, as Aristotle said of Greek drama, requires a beginning, a middle, and an end’.

On the 9Marks blog, Deepak Raju reproduces a list of questions copied from Don Whitney’s website.

• 1. What’s one thing you could do this year to increase your enjoyment of God?
  2. What’s the most humanly impossible thing you will ask God to do this year?
  3. What’s the single most important thing you could do to improve the quality of your family life this year?
  4. In which spiritual discipline do you most want to make progress this year, and what will you do about it?
  5. What is the single biggest time-waster in your life, and what will you do about it this year?
  6. What is the most helpful new way you could strengthen your church?
  7. For whose salvation will you pray most fervently this year?
  8. What’s the most important way you will, by God’s grace, try to make this year different from last year?
  9. What one thing could you do to improve your prayer life this year?
  10. What single thing that you plan to do this year will matter most in ten years? In eternity?

At the Gospel Coalition, Mike Pohlman writes about “Resolutions For 2010” and considers Jonathan Edwards, whose personal resolutions were for life, not just January.
For those of you who don’t know, here is Edward’s first resolution:
Resolved, that I will do whatsoever I think to be most to God’s glory, and my own good, profit and pleasure, in the whole of my duration, without any consideration of the time, whether now, or never so many myriads of ages hence. Resolved to do whatever I think to be my duty, and the most for the good and advantage of mankind in general. Resolved to do this, whatever difficulties I meet with, how many and how great soever.
Read all of Edward’s resolutions here.

Dan Philipps of Pyromaniacs provides “Proverbial perspectives at the year’s turn” by using the wisdom of Proverbs to give guidance about the difference between planning and presumption, and encourages us to be resolute, but humble.

Finally, Scotty Smith gives us:
A Prayer About the New Year and the Gospel
“Now fear the LORD and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your forefathers worshiped beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD. But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.” Joshua 24:14-15
Most gracious Father, I’m sitting here sipping fresh coffee watching flames dance in the fireplace, early into the first day of the New Year, and I’m a most humbled and grateful man.
How I praise you that I’ve begun this New Year with a little better understanding of the gospel than I had last year… and the previous years. I’m already praying that I can say the same thing this time next year. For in the gospel you’ve given me everything I need for living… and for dying.
I respond to Joshua’s bold charge to the Israelites, not with a list of New Year’s resolutions about me and what I’m gonna do this year for you. Rather, I begin this year resolving to abandon myself more fully to everything Jesus has already accomplished for me… to the specific things he intends to do in me… and to the ways he purposes to live his life and mission through me. He is the promise keeper, not me.
Dear Father, that’s why serving you is much more than merely “desirable.” It’s the greatest privilege possible… the most honored calling conceivable… the purest delight imaginable! For Jesus is my Joshua—the one by which you have already saved me… and are presently saving me… and, one Day, will completely save me. With no sense of embarrassment or cliché, I gladly say, JESUS SAVES!
Knowing you by grace and being known by you in Jesus, makes throwing away my idols less like a painful sacrifice, and more like a liberating dance. For all my “empty nothings” have ever given me is momentary pleasure, along with lasting disaster. Remind me of this all year long when I lose “gospel-sanity,” and am tempted to think otherwise…
So my humble prayer and earnest longing for this New Year is this… for me, my family, and the household of faith of which you have made me a part… that we will consider our lives worth nothing to us, if only we may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given us—the task of testifying (by word and deed) to the gospel of your grace. (Acts 20:24).
So very Amen, I pray, in Jesus name, with great anticipation and much thanksgiving.