New Year's Resolutions

That is such an assumption isn’t it…. That this time of year is one of happiness. Of hope. Of resolution and excitement and intention. January 1st comes with its promise of renewal, of change, of something better and greener and more glorious. The healthier, happier you awaits.

An opportunity to look ahead…. And also to reflect. To look back on. It can spark recollection of the previous year and further behind. For many of us we feel the freedom, permission, and possibly pressure to set resolution and adopt a determination to do better, be better in the coming year. How do you find the process of reflection and resolution? Is it helpful, soul-enriching for you? Does it fill you with dread and a sense of unease? Does it feel hopeless or pointless?

Whatever our relationship with resolution and reflection, there is a redemptive place for these processes in God’s kingdom and perspective. Looking to the wisdom of the past can help us here, in particular the resolutions of the late Puritan-early Evangelical Jonathan Edwards who left us a legacy of gospel-centred, Christ-focused and challenging personal resolutions as part of his personal writings.

It’s important to respectfully hold in mind that he wrote these with no intention for them to be read in the public sphere. Unlike his sermons and theological writings for the public domain, these were part of his personal journaling, a spiritual practice he began as a youth. In fact the resolutions we have preserved from his collection were written when he was just nineteen years old.

I know. Nineteen. I don’t know about you but this was not a stage or age in my life that feels particularly reflective… more reactive. Definitely not a time of intentionality, but one of transition.

Oh, absolutely I was full of plans and resolutions for life, but these were more steps to success ….I was focused on the present circumstances of university and studying and planning my next moves.

The steps and motions of my heart and the direction of my soul’s gaze towards the Lord were not, I’m afraid the focus of my soul’s efforts or strivings. I thought I could commit, make intentions and resolutions for my future situations, naïve and blind to the Lord’s sovereign will and directing of my path.

However, reading Edwards’ resolutions and being permitted a window into the heart of a humble and seeking, committed and focused young man has shown me time and again that the Lord’s control, power and authority still asks and requires of his children to plan, to resolve, to hope and strive for better in life. The only difference is His concern is not that we seek this in circumstance but in our Saviour, Jesus, and our devotion for Him.

As we read personal agonies and intentions, they reveal the heart’s labour in self-examination before God An intimate offering of a souls secure of his justification as a sinner before His Saviour. They are honest, raw revelations of a soul’s battle against sin, with sin, with the old flesh and self striving for place and the steps made to safeguard against temptation and remain in Christ. As we read them, we are not reading them as textbooks of systematic theology but at the same time, they contain a wealth of rich gospel truths that can comfort and challenge our hearts and set our paths on the true and narrow way of Christ.

Above all his intention is to glorify God, for only in this can we become the ‘complete Christian’ (resolution number 63 -from now on rn), glorifying him totally, wholly, in every thought, word and deed, venturing one’s entire self on Christ, living with all might (rn 6), as if it’s our last hour (rn 7) and as if every act were the last (rn 19).

This was a heavenly heart, one whose goal, resolution was heaven itself. These resolutions hold nothing back. There is no area of life left uncovered. Improving his time (rn 5), maximising his studying (rn 11), controlling his diet (rns 20, 40), reading Scripture (rn 28), combatting listlessness and laziness (rn 61), and examining his motives in everything he did (rns 23,24). Everything was intentional, a resolution.

His piety is stepped in Puritan principle and influence. Sabbath sanctity (rn 38), honouring of parents (rn 46) and watching one’s emotions and negative thoughts for revenge and hostility against others (rns 16,31,36) were acts of uncompromising righteousness.

On the face of it, resolutions fixated on heaven and mindful of one’s inevitable death may read as fatalistic. But instead of driving Edwards to nihilistic introspection, this journalling and habit of living by resolution was a spur to dedicate himself to true spirituality and to his Saviour.

As he specifically resolves, his passion, his hopes, his commitment was to safeguard his soul from thinking or acting upon anything that was not pleasing to the good of his soul and its contentment in Christ. This for Edwards was true resolved religion- one that sought the glory of God in and through his whole self. I hope as you read this it has not taken you on a spiral of shame … or conversely judgement. The exercise in looking to past wisdom, on looking back on our own previous steps is not necessarily to replicate the good practices, but to discern and glean how habits formed can serve as God’s gracious means to keep us in step with the Spirit- heart, soul, mind in step. Active obedience, as lived out through all we assent to, and all we reject, all we permit and all we reject.

Resolutions will be respective to our own bruised hearts, our own battles against our flesh and personal temptations. To reflect and resolve in the power of gospel redemptive hope will necessitate the submission of our hearts to the words of Christ over ourselves, to the scrutiny of Scripture above the gaze of ourselves or even the most trusted of others.

It won’t all feel terribly happy or linear or a quick top ten goals list for the coming year. It will be vulnerable and raw. But under the gaze of our loving heavenly Father, as we reflect on His Sovereign and gracious hand on our lives so far, as we reflect on His just and merciful steps towards us and our salvation in history and in the minutae of our lives, we can self-reflect and resolve knowing that we are held, secure and seen whole-heatedly with love, acceptance and assurance in our glorious Saviour Jesus.

There is risk in resolve and reflection but never any danger of loss or failure. The outcome is secure, for the Spirit will continue His sanctifying work in and through us. The only question for us this coming year is how do we want to keep and love out our walk in step with Him?

He has made every resolution and every complete assured commitment to bring us safely home to our Saviour. The resolutions you make this year, that I make, can only ever be ones of reflection…. Not to the past, not necessarily of repetition, but resolutions of humble reflection of our desperate and dependent hearts on the glorious grace of our God who has resolved to save and sanctify us forevermore.

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Emily Lucas is married to Ben and together they have three children. She is Tutor for Women and Student Welfare at Union School of Theology where she mentors in Church History and Systematic Theology. Emily is also studying for her doctorate in Puritan Anthropology.

Views expressed in blogs published by the Latimer Trust are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position of the Latimer Trust.