Restful Resolutions

New beginnings can be exciting and overflowing with anticipation, yet simultaneously intimidating and steep with challenges. 

As followers of Jesus, we are blessed with a different perspective on the new year than most. The world tells you that January 1st is the big opportunity to get your life together. To make it happen, rewrite your life and rewire your habits. From a surface-level view, it can seem good and beneficial, but if you brush back the top layer, you see that a lot of it stems from a place of wanting to feel like we are enough. 

At first glance, the whole idea sounds appealing. Many of us could make a long list of things we would like to change about ourselves, and we like to think we have enough strength and willpower to do it all on our own. And the truth is that we don’t. We can never do enough or be enough on our own strength, and we will burn ourselves out every time we try. But here’s some good news for us: 

God has not designed us as humans to live from a place of striving but from a place of rest. 

What if we changed our perspective on working toward our goals from a place of working to change ourselves to a posture that seeks to align with what God has already said and done? God has already done the work for us. He has already paid for our sins. He has already called us good, chosen, and worthy. What God hasn’t done is designed for us to operate from a place of strife and stress. In Matthew 11, Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” He wants to offer us rest in exchange for all the unnecessary burdens we place on ourselves. 

Does this mean we don’t participate in New Year's goals and inward or outward change? Of course not! Many times in scripture, God calls us to be holy and set apart and encourages us to be more like Jesus every day. And that does take action and work on our part. But the difference here is that we are invited to let go of all the ways that we would change ourselves to make ourselves “good,” and we get to come into the restful agreement with what God has already spoken over us. We get to move towards our goals from the perspective that we are already good, worthy children of God! Our value does not come from our own works, but from the sole word of the Father. 

So, as you make your goals for the new year, a new week, or tomorrow, double-check the root of the idea. Ask yourself, “Am I setting this goal from a place of confidence, knowing that I am already loved and enough? Or is this coming from a place that has lost view of what God has already said and accomplished on my behalf?”