Happy New Year

Well, it’s almost a brand New Year which will have some new challenges, new sorrows and some new joys. These are all part of our earthly life.  Have you made any New Year’s resolutions, which are really promises that you are making to yourself?  A new year brings about a desire for  positive changes to occur.

             Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) wrote out 70 resolutions when he was twenty years old and part of his resolution was to read them at least every week.  I really don’t know how many of them he kept or for



how long, but his heart certainly comes through loud and clear and we can look back at his life and see how God used him. I will share a few of them with you.  Before he started writing any of his resolutions this is what he said. “Aware that I am unable to do anything without God’s help, I do pray that, by His grace, He will enable me to keep these Resolutions, so far as they are in line with His will, and that they will honor Christ.”

      1. Resolved:  I will DO whatever I think will be most to God’s glory; and my own good,    profit and pleasure, for as long as I live. I will do all these things without any                              consideration of the time they take.

      7. Resolved: Never to do anything which I would be afraid to do if it were the last hour of  my life.

     13. Resolved: To be endeavoring to discover worthy objects of charity and liberality.

    20. Resolved: To maintain the wisest and healthiest practices in my eating and drinking.

    28. Resolved: To study the Scriptures so steadily, and so constantly, and so frequently,    that it becomes evident – even obvious – to myself that my knowledge of them has                  grown.

    52. I frequently hear persons in old age say how they would live, if they were to live their  lives over again, so… Resolved: That I will live just as I can imagine I shall wish I had              done, supposing I live to old age.

    61. Resolved:  I will not give way to that apathy and listlessness which I find artificially      eases and relaxes my mind from being fully and fixedly set on God’s Grace.

                God has given to us many of His resolutions but they are promises that we can totally depend upon, because He is a consistent God who changes not.  He has given to us the promise for a New Year and for every new day.

               Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness. Lam 3:22-23

                Happy New Year and a happy new you as you are a recipient of His great promises and His mercy which is brand new every morning.     

Pastor Marty