Real Resolutions

How many of you have already made and broken a new year's resolution? Give me time to make mine first and I'll probably join you. Part of our problem is we make resolutions without developing the strategy or means to keep them. After I asked my wife last night what resolution she was making for this coming year, I asked her how she was planning to accomplish it and she replied with a fairly blank stare. I would have responed the same way had she asked me.

According to a CNN article, the Journal of Consumer Research found that people often have trouble distinguishing between necessity and luxury. Those with less self-control considered more items as necessities, such as daily lattes and hair treatments. That makes resolution keeping pretty tough.

"People spend a couple hundred dollars on hair highlights, and they absolutely consider that a necessity. ..." Haws said. "The key problem we find is that they're not good at categorizing."
Researchers found that people start the new year with well-intended goals to lose weight or save money, but often give themselves so much leeway because they consider many items as necessities. This could explain why ambitious plans to shed weight or save money falter before January is over. "Most people fail over and over again." I can relate.

My resolutions will be spiritual ones this year because I figure if they are successful, the rest shouild fall in place. One of my goals is to just be quiet- or "be stil and know I Am God." Pastor Mark Driscoll from Seattle has blogged a nice article on this issue ("Silence") that I will make available on our blog (sixonsaturday.blogspot.com). My other resolutions will be the following written by Jonathan Edwards, one of America's greatest theologians and pastors, who led a great awakening- or spiritual revival in the 1700's. Edwards make more than six dozen resolutions over a two-year period including these:

Being sensible that I am unable to do anything without God's help, I do humbly entreat him by his grace to enable me to keep these resolutions, so far as they are agreeable to his will, for Christ's sake.

5. Resolved, never to lose one moment of time; but improve it the most profitable way I possibly can.

7. Resolved, never to do anything that I should be afraid to do if it were the last hour of my life.

8. Resolved, to act, in all respects, both speaking and doing, as if nobody had been so vile as I, and as if I had committed the same sins, or had the same infirmities or failings as others; and that I will let the knowledge of their failings promote nothing but shame in myself, and prove only an occasion of my confessing my own sins and misery to God.

14. Never to do anything out of revenge.

20. Resolved, to maintain the strictest temperance in eating and drinking.

24. Resolved, whenever I do any conspicuously evil action, to trace it back till I come to the original cause; and then both carefully endeavor to do so no more, and to fight and pray with all my might against the original of it.

28. Resolved, to study the Scriptures so steadily, constantly and frequently, as that I may find, and plainly perceive myself to grow in the knowledge of the same.

30. Resolved, to strive to my utmost every week to be brought higher in religion, and to a higher exercise of grace, than I was the week before.

55. Resolved, to endeavor to my utmost to act as I can think I should do if I had already seen the happiness of heaven and the torments of hell.

69. Resolved, always to do that which I shall wish I had done when I see others do it.

Will this be the year of the second coming of our Lord as we're discussing Saturday nights? If so, may we be resolved and ready.

Silence by Mark Driscoll

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven... a time to be silent and a time to speak...Ecclesiastes 3:1, 7b

It was a very normal day until I realized that I was actively destroying my own soul.
The day began with my alarm jolting me awake. I immediately turned on my BlackBerry to hear it chime for each voicemail and email that had been left while I slept. I stepped into the shower where I listened to my waterproof radio. I then turned on the television to catch some news while I dressed. Driving to work I tuned in to some talk-radio banter.

Throughout the day the chime on my laptop kept ringing as email arrived, and my cell phone continued to vibrate and ring on my hip. Before long, I needed a break, and I put on my iPod to go for a walk.

On the drive home, I again listened to the radio in an effort to drown out the blaring horns of frustrated fellow commuters. After eating dinner and tucking my five children into bed, I turned on the television to watch shows I had recorded on my Tivo. As I drifted off to sleep, it dawned on me that I had not had one minute of silence during my entire day. It was possible, I realized, that I could live the rest of my life without ever again experiencing silence.

In that moment, God deeply convicted me that I was addicted to the false trinity of our day, the gods known as Noise, Hurry, and Crowds. I remembered the words of missionary martyr Jim Elliot, who said, "I think the devil has made it his business to monopolize on three elements: noise, hurry, crowds . . . Satan is quite aware of the power of silence."

I began to ponder what Jesus’ life might be like if He lived today. Would He be available to all of His followers twenty-four hours a day on His BlackBerry? Would He have left His phone on at the Last Supper and been continually interrupted by needless calls? Would He have failed to stop and speak to needy people because their weeping was not loud enough for Him to hear over His iPod as He hurried past them on His way to a meeting He was already late for?

In that moment I prayed, asking God for His wisdom and help to save me from myself. God answered my prayer and reminded me that Jesus often took periods of prayerful silence to hear from the Father and to ensure not that He was doing everything He could, but that He was doing only what was most important. For example, before beginning His public ministry, Jesus spent forty days fasting from food, people, and noise in an effort to prepare Himself to fully accomplish what God the Father had given Him to do on the earth.

Moreover, the Bible says in Luke 5:16 that "Jesus often withdrew to lonely places." Jesus spent considerable time alone in silence to pray, rest, and focus on what priorities He should be devoting His time and energy to. This helps to explain why, in just three short years of ministry, Jesus had a greater impact on history than anyone else who has ever lived.

The Bible also describes multiple benefits of purposeful silence, including:
hearing from God (1 Kings 19:11–13)
waiting patiently for the Lord to act (Lamentations 3:25–28)
worshiping God (Habakkuk 2:20)
knowing God better (Psalm 46:10)
praying effectively (Luke 5:16)

Since God convicted me of my addiction to noise, I have sought to conform my life more to the pattern of Jesus’, which has proven quite helpful. I try to spend at least five minutes an hour in silence, at least thirty minutes in uninterrupted silence each day, and a full day in silence once a month. During those times I find myself going for silent prayer walks to listen to God, writing in my journal, and sometimes doing nothing at all, which for me has become an act of faith that God is at work even when I am not.

My prayer is that those reading this who, like me, are guilty of noise addiction can also experience the regular gift of silence because that is often where God is waiting for us. There was silence before God spoke the world into existence, and silence for forty days before Jesus began His public ministry, which may indicate that silence is what allows us to speak as God intends.