For A Change
We flipped the calendar to a new year! 2024. What does this mean? Change.
Some of us have a list of New Year’s resolutions: ways we desire change in our personal lives, careers, families, or finances. Others among us will simply attempt to change the wiring in our brains so that we write “2024” instead of “2023” on our cheques and memos. With the unseasonably warm temperatures, some are still waiting for the “real” changing of the season.
Yet change can often be difficult and unpleasant. Those resolutions resemble insurmountable mountain peaks by January 30th. Frustration builds upon the seventh time of erasing the wrong date on a cheque. Movement causes friction against the ruts in which we’d rather comfortably roll.
However, a quip from one of my seminary profs rings true:
“Change is the call of every Christ-follower!” (Howard Hendricks)
From the moment we turn in faith to Jesus Christ for salvation, we are then called into a life of progressive sanctification, i.e., incrementally becoming more like Jesus (cf. Rom. 6:19-22). As we walk with Christ by the indwelling power of the Spirit and with God’s Word as our guide, we experience day-by-day change (Gal. 5:16-26).
The apostle Paul exhorted believers, “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom. 12:2).
God continues sanding off our rough attitudes, coarse words, and sharp pride. This New Year, let’s purpose through prayer to lean into whatever change He wants to bring in us – no matter how uncomfortable it may be. The best is yet to come!
In Christ Alone,
Have a very Happy New Year!
December 2023 | The Breznau Family | Atop Empire Bluff, Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore | Empire, Michigan
