Bill's Bible Blog

Happy New Year everybody!  My life has been changing at the speed of light the past few weeks, but we mortals still react to change at the same plodding pace. I’ve plenty of opportunities to trust God and to show His grace, but I can always use some inspiration.

I was looking for some inspiration on the Internet the other morning and I came across “26 Verses for 2026.” Just what I was looking for! (Funny how that happens…)  So, I’m going to share one each week, along with my thoughts. Maybe you’ll find inspiration from them too.

January:  Verses About Resolutions

1. Ecclesiastes 5:5 – Be Commited:

I heard on the news this week that most people are making the same New Year’s Resolutions they made last year–to
exercise more, to eat better, to save money, to lose weight–but since resolving to do those things last year didn’t work, what’s the likelihood it will work this year?

You might also have seen practical suggestions for being more successful with your resolutions:

One of my resolutions, when I got off my oral chemo last month, was to lose the weight it had caused me to gain. So far I’ve lost 7 pounds. Woo-hoo!  Much farther to go, though, but I’m committed to following my plan…

Making changes to your physical and mental habits is hard! But do you know what is even harder? Making SPIRITUAL changes.

You see, God made us in His glorious image, not on the outside, but on the inside. Our character is supposed to be a reflection of who God is. For example:

Notice my qualifier “at our best.” You see,  there’s this thing called “sin.” Humankind at the beginning turned from God in disobedience and this forever scarred our psyche. Instead of living to the glory of God, our nature was turned upside down and inside out, and now we live to glorify ourselves.

That doesn’t sound so bad, until you realize we are supposed to love each other to the point of sacrificing our own needs and desires for other’s good. Turn that around and you get people who love themselves most of all, and who are willing to sacrifice anything and everything of the people around them, to fulfill their own needs and desires. That results in some very ugly things in this world.

When we choose to come to God by faith in Jesus Christ, God begins a process of reversing the harm of sin in our lives, both from our sin within and from others’ sin from without. That means fundamentally changing who we are on the inside.

You might wonder, “Doesn’t God accept me as I am?” Yes, He does. He doesn’t require that we try to make these changes before He accepts us, because WE CANNOT!

God meets us wherever we are in life when we come to Him–He accepts us as we are, but then He redeems us from sin and darkness, and He brings us into His glory and light. He loves us so much, He won’t leave us where we are–in a pit of sin, darkness and despair.

But real, deep down change of who we are doesn’t happen immediately. We have to walk out what this means for the rest of our lives. You see, every day is a New Day in the Christian life. Therefore, every day requires a New Day’s Resolution.

So, let’s start each day in our relationship with God by making a committment to Him. Follow through on that PROMISE YOU MADE TO GOD when He first redeemed you.