Your Turning Point

New year with new resolutions?

A study from the UK has found that about two-thirds of people abandon their New Years resolutions within a month.

The study also found that most resolutions involve either diet or exercise, and that people tend to make the same resolutions year after year.

It was less than a week ago scrolling through YouTube that I learned about the smart phone application Exodus 90. “Let my people go!”

Read Exodus Reading & Reflection

Offer up a holy hour of prayer daily

Take short, cold showers

Abstain from eating between meals

Abstain from TV and televised sports

Listen only to music that lifts the soul to God

Fast on Wednesday and Friday

Intensive exercise

Also, I want to read the from cover to cover the entire bible this year, so I got a head start and opened Genesis: Creation, Fall, Murder, Distorted Relationships.

Genesis 5:1–3 (ESV)

5 This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in the _likeness of God_. 2 Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created. 3 When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in _his own likeness_, after his image, and named him Seth.

Being made in Adam’s image, his offspring were subjected to self-pleasure, addictions, violence, anger, pride, jealously, envy. Worse of all - his progeny would taste death.

Maybe we can relate with this? Sounds like our family, or even worse, it me. Yet, those characteristics don’t have to define you or our family. “Someone has to break the family linage, why not you?”

And reading farther we see one biblical character who breaks the mold.

23 Thus all the days of Enoch were 365 years. 24 Enoch _walked with God_, and _he was not, for God took him. _

Walking equates to being close. i.e., beside, next to, among him. He did something different than his past relatives.

Why did God take him?

Hebrews 11:5–6 (NLT)

5 It was by faith that Enoch was taken up to heaven without dying—“he disappeared, because God took him.” For before he was taken up, he was known as a _person who pleased God_. 6 And it is impossible to please God without _faith_. Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him.

Pleasing the world involves performance to show your worth to them. God on the other hand doesn’t get his pleasure from you believing that you have to earn his friendship and love. He already loves you because of what Jesus did on the cross.

The spiritual truth is

God pleasure in you is not based on your _performance_, rather His pleasure comes from your _presence_.

Enoch pleased God by faith and was with God. He didn’t have to do anything other than choose him.

Performance says... read, pray, serve, or God isn't happy with you.

Presence says... read, pray, serve because God is madly in love with you.

Your turning point starts when you live in God's presence.

Make your new years resolution about pleasing God by being with him more today than ever before.