New Year, New Me
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Introduction:
- Give thanks to Pastor for the opportunity to speak.
- Pray for the service.
As we have entered this New Year I feel the Lord is trying to call us deeper and get us in alignment with His plan for us as a church. I love our theme for this year, It is Go Time! It’s time to answer the call, it’s time to commit ourselves to this message and go out into all the world. But I ask you today are we ready to stay commited to what God has planned or are we going to treat our commitment as we may treat a New Years resolution.
There seems to be this stereotype or belief in the back of our minds that New Years resolutions are something that is just inevitably going to fail.
My brain simply goes to the phrase New Year, New Me. I am pretty sure everybody is familiar with this phrase or have heard it before. It seems that is promoted everywhere around the New years season. People make a commitment to make this New Year better than the one before. They start on a high point to begin their year with New years resolutions on the forefront of their mind. The most common resolutions being that you may want to get healthier, spend more time off your phone, or even trying to be a better person. When it pertains to people in the church it could be things like becoming more consistent in your prayer life and time in the word of God, or even starting to do those two things which is great. Unfortunately the statistics say that most likely you will not stay commited to your resolution.
- Recent research has shown that just 9% of Americans actually keep their resolutions throughout the year.
- 23% of adults quit their New Year's goals by the end of the first week of January. That number doubles by the end of January with 43% of adults quitting their resolution.
So I have come to tell someone today that our commitments to God for this new year are not just some Resolution that we begin strong but lose consistency in. God is looking for consistency and a people who will make him the center of their life. We get to come to this building where the Lord challenges us through His Word. The Lord fills our cup up to be able to Go and share with this World. God forbid that we would come here every Sunday and Thursday and just be a hearer.
We are told by James in His Epistle that we are to not just be hearers of the Word but also doers of the Word. When we commit to the Lord we are commissioned to Go.
Too many times we have a powerful move of God like we have had multiple times this year and we decide to commit ourselves to do His will. When the time comes we decide to not do it. I am preaching to myself today! There have been many times where I have felt the Lord challenge me and I made the decision to say yes but when the time comes, I allowed myself to be swayed by fear, laziness, or even unbelief in myself. The Lord is challenging someone to say God I need you to strengthen me, I need you to help me keep my commitment to you.
A very common passage is Luke 16:13
13 No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
I would also like to go to Matthew 22:37
37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
Some may have doubt at times and feel discouraged but we must remember that when we make a commitment to God what happens next is not a product of our strength but a product of the spirits work through us. All we are called to do is to Love the Lord with all our heart, soul, and mind. This means we shall not put anything before the Lord. No hobby, no interest, or person should be put in higher priority before the Lord. I say this today because I want to remind someone today that we need to be careful we are not staying faithful to the things of this world more than the things of our God.
Are you more faithful to making it to the Tv for a sports game then to your appointment in the morning with the Lord? Are you faithful going out of your comfort zone for a promotion at work but not going out of your comfort zone to reach a lost soul?
Again I am not trying to be too harsh but I want us to reflect on our faithfulness to the Lord compared to the things we do in this world.
We cannot serve God and mammon which means the material things we have in our life. We have to choose who gets our faithfulness.
I have been studying the book of Ecclesiastes and I have been challenged by it. I am thankful for the Word of God and the correction and challenges it brings to my life. While reading this book, the Lord has been challenging me to look at this world and the material things in a new way.
We will be reading from Ecclesiastes 1
Ecclesiastes 1 (KJV 1900)
1 The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.
2 Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.
3 What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?
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8 All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.
9 The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.
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14 I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.
The Preacher in this first chapter talks about how the things of this world are ultimately going to pass away. They are meaningless, you will not receive the satisfaction that you need from the things of this world.
Solomon is traditionally attributed to this book and I love what he says in verse 14, the last verse we read. He said I have seen all of the work done on this Earth and all that it can breed. And he would say that all of those things are empty and will pass away one day. King Solomon, known as the wisest king to ever live, had the opportunity to experience all that you can experience in this life. The conclusion that he reached was that these can not satisfy our needs. We were all created to worship, it’s in our nature. Too many times we end up putting our faith in things of this world and this passage is reminding us that these materialistic things cannot be our foundation.
When we make a commitment to God and stay true to it, we are committing to a work that is beyond this world. You are investing directly into the kingdom of God which is the work God is doing here on Earth. God has given us the opportunity to commit to an eternal work that will last. I’m thankful for the purpose God has given us all. It isn’t as Solomon described as vanity but it is eternal and it can change the trajectory of not just one life but many after.
24 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.
I thank God that he has not only given us eternal life but has also given us the opportunity to tell the world about it. When we begin to commit to Him we are saying yes to the call to preach this great gospel to this World. The harvest is plentiful but the Lord is calling for a people who are going to be faithful to their commitment. God has given us so much in our life and we can share that with people. We have more than enough reasons to share this gospel and remain commited.
In Ecclesiastes 5 King Solomon begins to talk about how God looks at vows or promises.
4 When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it; for he hath no pleasure in fools: pay that which thou hast vowed.
5 Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay.
6 Suffer not thy mouth to cause thy flesh to sin; neither say thou before the angel, that it was an error: wherefore should God be angry at thy voice, and destroy the work of thine hands?
7 For in the multitude of dreams and many words there are also divers vanities: but fear thou God.
A vow was a very serious voluntary contract between people back in the Biblical days. Sadly this is not the case today, it seems that people make vows with the belief that vows are made to be broken. God says otherwise here in Ecclesiastes 5. God commands us through the preacher that if we make a vow we are to keep that vow.
In the Bible knowledge commentary on this chapter it says for verses 6 and 7, “The basis for this warning was Deuteronomy 23:21–23, where vows were described as voluntary but binding once made, because failure to fulfill them was called sin and would result in God’s punishment.”
This is still the case for today, failure to keep your word is a big deal to the Lord. Before we go and make a vow or a promise someone we must reconsider whether we will come through. We are made in His image and that means we are made to be faithful to our word.
This is also the case for our commitment to God. When we have those moments of commitments the Lord is wanting us to keep our word and commit to what he is challenging you to do. Maybe there have been times in the past where we have made commitments without even thinking about it. God is challenging us today to turn from that.
Ultimately God has given us free will and it’s up to us whether we will say yes or no to what God is calling us to commit to. Though we may be saying no it doesn’t mean the Lord is going to stop reaching. Countless times throughout the Bible we see the unfaithfulness of God’s people to their commitment and covenant with God but through a prophet or preach God says, the hand of the Lord is still extended and waiting for a people to commit.
Conclusion.
You may be wondering how does this all relate to a New year and a New me. Well I have come to encourage someone today that may have struggled in the past with their commitments to God. I’ve come to say to you that it is a new year and it could be a new you. The Word of the Lord in Lamentations 3:22-23 says,
22 It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.
23 They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.
His mercies are new every morning. Meaning that the person that you were before isn’t who you have to be. If we would say Lord I want to be who you want me to be this year and ask for the strength of the Lord to intervene so you can stay commited to His Will. We can forget that when we recieved the Holy Ghost, we said “ Lord I can’t do it on my own, I need you to work through me. I have been depended on my strength for way too long.” All God is wanting us to do is say yes and He will take care of the rest.
If we look at God’s covenant with creation we can see that He is the one who has stayed faithful throughout time. We were unfaithful as humanity but that didn’t stop God from keeping His word. In fact God kept His side of the covenant and our side at the same time. God manifested himself in flesh to justify us so we can fulfill our side of the covenant. If God has done that for all of human history, he can do that with whatever commitment you have made with Him. Don’t let this be another resolution but be commited to your promises that you made to God.
