Thinking Christian about New Years Resolutions, Part 1

The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian Podcast. I'm Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Everyone, welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. Today I wanted to do something a little bit different on the program, and I wanted to shift away from the emphasis on Christmas, and I want to start thinking about what it looks like in the new year. New Year's comes with New Year's resolutions, and so I thought I'd do a few episodes here before Christmas just thinking through how we should think about New Year's resolutions and what our New Year's resolutions might be. Now, I will preface this and say that I think my views over the last year have really changed. You know, like anything, I'm reading, I'm learning, I'm sort of growing in my faith and looking at the Bible differently. And I think last year when I did the New Year's resolutions episode, I still gave some helpful hints. I think those are good principles. I think, you know, starting slow, taking time, you know, all the different things that I mentioned on that New Year's episode, which I'm going to repost actually after this one, but I wanted to give people a little bit of a different take on it before, before that one gets reposted. But I do think that one of the things that I sort of missed last year was the idea that we aren't just sort of changing our behavior, we're actually transforming ourselves. And maybe even putting it that way is the wrong way to put it. It's not exactly transforming ourselves, it's being transformed. And so I want to do a couple episodes. So the way this is going to happen, I'm going to, I'm going to do a new episode today and we're going to talk a little bit about Psalm 1 or an aspect of Psalm 1 that I really love and that I've been meditating on for some time now. And then the next episode will be the repost of the New Year's Eve episode from last year. And I'm going to then follow that up with an episode that sort of interacts a little bit more with the post on New Year's resolutions from last year. And I'm going to almost critique myself, I suppose, and critique that conversation and try to talk it through in a little bit different way. Because at the end of the day, I think what I've learned this year is that discipleship opens up opportunities that are beyond anything we could ask or think. And I take that, you know, sort of it's a little bit of a biblical and theological statement, but there's the verse in Ephesians and I believe it's Ephesians 3 that God is able to do abundantly more than we could ever ask or think. And so as we lean into discipleship, as we go about doing discipleship and we, discipleship in my mind is learning to live under the authority of Christ is the way that I usually describe it. But I think another picture of that is it's us being able to true ourselves to God as our reference point. I'm sort of started staying away from the language of foundation. And I know the Bible uses the language of foundation, cornerstone language for Christ. And so there's nothing inherently wrong with it. But I think in our day and age, foundation speaks to sort of fundamentalism and, you know, I don't know, a little bit more of a rigid take on biblical studies than normally I would associate myself with. And so I like the idea of a reference point. We're constantly trying to true ourselves to a reference point. And so what I'm saying there is that God is our reference point and that everything we're doing is we're trying to align ourselves with him. We're moving closer and closer into that reference point. We're truing ourselves to it. And so, you know, as opposed to saying something like, Hey, living by the truth or something like that, what we're always trying to do is we're trying to align ourselves with God. We're trying to true ourselves to that reference point. And I think what that opens up is it opens up this idea of responding to God. If you've listened to the podcast at all, you've probably heard me talk about, you know, responding to God from within the situation we find ourselves as opposed to responding to the situations apart from God. And what I'm really saying there is this, you know, when we are in the, when we're living life, if we really believe that God is the most relevant actor or factor in any given situation that we're in, our response is always to him from within the situation. Our response is not to the situation apart from him. So we don't just go off and do whatever we want. We don't live life on our own terms and hope that God comes along with us. We actually reorient ourselves so that we are looking at God, that we are attending to God, that he is our reference point, that we are responding to him and that whatever that entails to do within that situation, that's what we're doing. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed with inflation, market volatility and ongoing global uncertainty. More families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text guide to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text guide to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. So I'm not trying to convey this sort of inactive or monk-like, we might say, moment where all we're doing is we're isolating ourselves from the world and we're sitting in deep prayer and meditation. I think that's fine for some time, but the Bible definitely speaks of engaging the world. We are to be out there engaging the world. And so, again, just as I've sort of thought more about this, and I'm thinking about, you know, what I'm going to do next year, how I've grown this year, what I'm reflecting on and how I'd like to sort of convey things a little differently next year. I think this idea of God's presence, particularly the beatific vision, is really crucial. I had a conversation about the beatific vision on the podcast. I'm going to link that in the show description. It's one of those episodes that I loved. It was a very good and rich and deep theological discussion, but I think a lot of people don't know what the beatific vision necessarily is. It's not sort of common vernacular for most Christian evangelicals. But the beatific vision is basically this. It's that idea that our goal, our desire, is to come into the presence of the Lord and to be fully known by him and to fully know him. Now, what does that mean? Does that mean that we become all of a sudden omniscient and we know everything about God and he knows everything about us? I don't think so. I think what it means is that we are in God's presence and we are fully satisfied in being there. We are always going to be dependent creatures. Increasingly, I've been saying that we are dependent on, not independent from, God. And we are created that way. We're not created to be autonomous. We are created to be in dependence on, not independent from, God. And so as we think about who we are in Christ, as we think about what it means to be truly human, we have to think about that in terms of us being dependent on God, but not being dissatisfied with our limitations, not being dissatisfied with our dependence. Like that is just part of who we are and it's a strength because now what we get is we get to experience God in his fullness. We're not trying to get away from him. We're actually trying to run toward him. And that's also wrapped up in the beatific vision. So I'll link that podcast or that episode of the podcast in the show description. I'd really encourage you to listen to it. It's really a fascinating concept. I was excited to get to learn about it this year and I really enjoyed just sitting down and talking about it. So one of the ways that I think that sort of resonated with me was because my Old Testament background sort of leads me into issues of like sacred space and the temple and the sacrificial system. And how do people draw near to God? Even when I did my New Testament studies during my second MA at Wheaton College, I tended to gravitate toward New Testament books like Hebrews. Hebrews just has a lot of temple imagery, a lot of Old Testament quotation, a lot of sacred space sort of ideas bedded within it. And so part of the reason that the beatific vision resonates with me is you start to understand that the temple and the tabernacle aren't ends in themselves. They're sort of vehicles for mediating God's presence within a broken world of sin. And that as we progress through the Bible and we see this coming in the New Testament as the body of Christ is now the temple, this is where the Holy Spirit dwells. He dwells among us and then in our individual bodies, our bodies are a temple because the Holy Spirit dwells among us. What Paul's suggesting there is that we've become sacred space, that we've become this locus for God's presence and that as such, we have to act in holiness.

Cadence of life, there is a joy, a peace, all these things that are sort of we think of as the fruits of the Holy Spirit, these are things that we exhibit because we are in God's presence. And so that then changes the way I think about how we go about doing, setting New Year's resolutions, making sure that we move toward New Year's resolutions. And I think that Psalm 1 really has something to say about this. And so as I walk through Psalm 1, I'm going to be just talking a little bit about what, why I see this as such an important text, what it, you know, what I think it's really, what its value is when we think about New Year's resolutions, and how I think it might go about helping us understand how to transform ourselves in the new year. So I'm going to read the text and then I'm going to just, you know, talk through it a little bit and, you know, nothing major, you know, no, no major exegesis coming. But I am going to read through the text and then stop and talk a little bit about the way I'm approaching New Year's resolutions, which is slightly different from last year. So here we go, Psalm 1. I'm reading out of the New English Translation, so it might be a little different than you're used to, but the NET, it's actually available online, netbible.org. That's not a plug, that's just, it's a great resource and if you're not using it, I want to make you, you know, aware of its existence. It really is a fantastic Bible to use online. They have what are usually called interpretive or translator notes, and they allow you some insight into the Greek and Hebrew that if you're not, if you haven't studied Greek and Hebrew, I had to do that. I enjoyed doing that. I still have, you know, my Greek and Hebrew Bibles around. And so I dip in every once in a while, but the Net Bible is a great shortcut for a guy like me, and I think it could be a great help for folks who just don't really know Greek or Hebrew. It gives you some really interesting ideas about what the text is doing. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. All that to say, this translation may be a little different than what you're used to hearing, but it is the NET or netbible.org. I have the physical copy here, so I'm going to be reading out of an actual physical Bible. Here we go. How blessed is the one who does not follow the advice of the wicked or stand in the pathway with sinners or sit in the assembly of scoffers. So I think the first thing here to recognize is that there is a way to be blessed that involves us stepping away from those who are characterized or exhibiting behaviors that are incommensurate with the Christian life. And so as we think about this, what are we really saying? Well, we're saying that there are these folks who want to give us advice, but they're wicked. There are people who are, you know, we are not standing in the pathway with sinners. We're not assembling with scoffers. We're attending to who we're hanging out to. We're attending about what we take in. We're considering and making sure that if we are taking something in, that it is appropriate for us to take in. And we are being careful about where we get our advice from, where we take counsel from, how we take in information and consider then what that means for our lives. And I think this is a really crucial point in discipleship. There are aspects of this that are really important. We have to recognize that in our world today, we have tremendous access to information. It's sort of unending amounts of information. And yet so much of it, it doesn't true itself up with this reference point that we're talking about with God. It doesn't true itself up to God. It doesn't true itself up to the design that God has for us. Now, I don't want to say that everything out there is, you know, horrible. I think we have to, as Christians, recognize the good where we can find it. And when we see something good, we need to affirm that good, even when we're saying that good is incomplete and we need to go beyond it. And so we recognize goodness, but we don't assume that that goodness is complete. We know that God has something more planned and we know what that something more is. But that doesn't mean that we can't recognize the good. By the same token, because we know who God is, because we have God's revelation in his word, because we know his son and have the testimony of the Holy Spirit inside of us, we also need to recognize when things aren't truing themselves up to those reference points. We need to recognize the falsehood, the wickedness, the poor advice, the paths that don't lead anywhere good. We need to recognize those and avoid them. And this is part of living a blessed life. And I'm going to just say, I think, you know, this blessed life has a lot of resonances with what I think of of being a disciple of Jesus Christ, that the blessed one here is seeking to follow after the Lord as opposed to following after anything else. He's trying to live life on God's terms. And I think that's really crucial. And so part of living life on God's terms is avoiding the advice of the wicked, avoiding the pathway of the sinners, and avoiding the assembly of the scoffers. So that's just verse 1. Then we go on in verse 2 and it says this, instead, so instead of doing these other things, he finds pleasure in obeying the Lord's commands. He meditates on his commands day and night. So in addition to avoiding these other aspects, we also have to sort of dive in and learn to delight in the law of the Lord. And this translation, I think rightly moves toward obedience, obeying the Lord's commands. That is what it means to delight in the law of the Lord. In other words, we're not just looking at it and going, oh, this is fascinating reading. It's like our favorite novel or favorite show or something. It's not that. It's that we are delighting in doing it, that we're finding the joy of following God's way. We're finding the joy in living on God's terms. That's what this is talking about. So that obeying God's commands are not oppressive things that we're doing, but that they become this source of joy in our lives. We have a love for it, not because, you know, partially because we love God, right? And we love God and we want to be loyal to him. Our allegiance to him suggests obedience. The commitment we've made in discipleship is certainly about obedience. We are to learn to observe all that Christ commanded. And so even as we look at, you know, learning about God's word, which I think is really important, we also need to learn to obey God's word, which is what we do in discipleship. And so here this translation really emphasizes that idea of pleasure in obeying. There's a pleasure in truing ourselves up to God's reference point. There's a pleasure in that. Meditating on his commands day and night. Now, this is something that I think often gets misconstrued. I don't think this means we have to be in constant Bible study. I don't think anybody really thinks that. But what does it mean then to meditate on God's word day and night? I think it means that the script that is running in our head is constantly, what would God say about this? What is God's instruction in this moment? How do I think about this from a godly perspective? Really, the question I've increasingly been asking myself is that one that I talked about sort of as I was introducing this episode. How do I go about responding to God from within a situation as opposed to responding to the situation apart from God? How do I live my life on God's terms? And so in order to live life on God's terms, we have to understand what those terms actually are. One of my favorite little passages in scripture, it's an odd one. It's Deuteronomy 17, and it gives the laws concerning Israelite kings or the instructions regarding Israelite kings. And one of the things that an Israelite king was to do when he's installed is he's to write down his own copy. He's to make his own copy of the Israelite laws. He's to write down all the laws for himself. And then once he's done with that, he's to give it to the priests and the priests are to approve it. And part of what this does is it obviously alerts the king, right, to the laws of God. Writing it out, you get an intimate knowledge while you're writing all of these things out, while you're copying it, while you're being meticulous and making this copy. I think number two, because it's not just, hey, you have to read the one that the king before you did, you know, he's going to pass this down to you and you just take

His own copy. He needed to own it. It needed to be his. And I think then having it checked by the priest is obviously a way to demonstrate a couple of things. Number one, that there's multiple checks to make sure that the king has copied the word correctly, but also that the king is still sitting underneath this authority of God. The priest would, in this case, be, I think, a sort of a surrogate or a representative of God. And the priest, once they approve this copy of the law, then the king is to read it throughout his reign so he can familiarize himself and remain familiar with God's word. And I think that is sort of a nice picture of the sort of practice that we're supposed to go through. We need to be figuring out ways that we can get God's word into us. And I don't think that means, I've never been big on memorizing scripture verses. I'm not very good at it. I've just never had the time. But what I tend to do is read, read, and reread, read, and reread. And so that's how I've learned the scriptures over the years. It probably takes a little longer, but I just read and reread. Not good at pulling specific verse references usually, you know, chapter and verse often escaped me, but I do know where things are. I can find them. I can draw them up out of my mind. I think it's just due to this sort of constant practice of going back and reading different stories. One of the other things I like to do is I like to read passages that are a little odd. You know, not a lot of people do their devotions out of Leviticus 19, but that's where we find these initial comments about loving neighbor as self. And when you know that, when you, when you read that in context, and you see that it's linked to God's holiness and the imitation of God and being holy because God is holy, it takes on a different dimension. And not a lot of people do the, look at, you know, David's taking of the census at the end of Chronicles, this is the end of 1 Chronicles. You know, not many people are going to go to that passage and go, oh, great, what a great devotional piece. But I think diving into those passages, they force me to think and rethink what God's word is actually saying because they resist those normal interpretive grids that I can put onto things, right? If I'm reading that passage, that's devotionally familiar to me, it's easy for me just to say, well, I know what this one means. And I know what the application is. And I'm just so excited to read it again. And I love this passage. And I do do that. But at the same time, reading some of those odd passages, some of the ones that we're not as familiar with, I think does give us sort of this moment where we can be challenged by God's word in a fresh way because we don't bring with it a framework that can make sense of some of these passages, which I think is kind of fantastic. And so I really try. It's one of the practices I do. I love Bonhoeffer's statement. He was speaking at this ecumenical conference in Glen and he says something like, has it not become apparent that we've become more enamored with our own thoughts than with the word of God? We need to read the Bible against ourselves as opposed to for ourselves. And what he means by that is that the Bible, we should come to it expecting it to transform us and change us. And I think that one of the ways I've tried to do that and to be transformed by God's word is to read those odd passages, to dive in and try to find the ones that I'm not as familiar with and familiarize myself with them and find what's there in God's word. And so like this year, I'm an Old Testament guy. My specialty is in Old Testament, even though I did do, you know, New Testament in my second master's, an emphasis in New Testament as well. But I never really studied in depth like things like Revelation. And so in the coming year, what I'm hoping to do is get some commentaries on Revelation, study through that book, try to understand it. Not really planning to do a lot with it, maybe even on the podcast. That's not the point. The point is that this is a book that I'm not quite as familiar with as I'd like to be. And I think it would just hold some real interesting jewels and change my perspective that much more. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free Retirement Defense Guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. And so all that to say that when we're thinking about delighting in God's Word and meditating on God's Word day and night, I think there are strategies we can employ to really help us understand how to do that in the most effective possible way. So what we've had right now, we're avoiding certain things. We're avoiding the advice of the wicked. We're avoiding the pathway of sinners. We're avoiding the assembly of the scoffers. And we're also learning to delight in the law of the Lord and meditating on God's Word day and night. And so those two really things are really crucial here. And I think what we'll find as we read through a little bit more of the psalm is that being this kind of person positions us to be transformed, positions us for change. It puts us in a context, in an environment in which we are just going to be different. And so we read here in verse 3, he is like this blessed one who avoids the wicked and meditates on God's Word day and night. He is like a tree planted by flowing streams. It yields its fruit at the proper time and its leaves never fall off. He succeeds in everything he attempts. Not so with the wicked. Instead, they are like wind-driven chaff. For this reason, the wicked cannot withstand judgment, nor can sinners join the assembly of the godly. Certainly the Lord guards the way of the godly, but the way of the wicked ends in destruction. So what I think we're seeing in part, at least in Psalm 1, is that when we decide that we are going to reorient ourselves to pay attention to God, to give our attention and our time to God, to really say to ourselves, the best possible thing that I can do, the best way to live my life is in obedience to the Lord, drawing near to him, trying to get closer into his presence, trying to understand who he is, allowing his presence in our lives to change the way we respond to various situations. I think these are crucial aspects of discipleship. And so as I thought through the New Year's resolutions this year, one of the things that I've sort of thought through as a basic building block of anything that I'm going to do is I want them to draw me into the presence of the Lord. I want these things to be rooted in biblical practices. I want them to be drawing me in and helping me understand who God is better. I want to take appropriate risks, not the sort of risks that I would design myself, right? I'm not going to go bungee jumping probably this year, but I want to take those risks that God is calling me to take, that as God calls me to true myself up to him, to true myself up to him as that reference point, that is always going to entail some sort of risk, possibly even some sort of loss. And I think that this year I want to try to take those a little bit better. And so while there could be other practical tips and strategies, and like I said, I'm going to replay the episode from last year, the New Year's Eve episode from last year, which is probably the most popular episode of Thinking Christian I've ever done. And so I'm going to replay that one. And then what I want to do is I want to critique that one in a following episode. So this is just sort of the primer to give you a lay of the land of where this is going. And hopefully you'll stick with me through all three episodes. I think it'll be fruitful specifically as you think through what happens next year. How can we devote ourselves to discipleship next year? How does Thinking Christian really factor into everything that we do in our lives? And what is it that we're going to do next year, not to challenge ourselves to change ourselves, but to put ourselves in a position to be changed and transformed by God. And I think that's probably the right way to think about it. We need to adopt a posture in which we are in that proximity to God and that he is going to be able to change and transform us. So hopefully you enjoyed this episode. I hope you'll join back. Listen to last year's episode on Thinking Christian on the New Year's episode, and you'll hear me there with my co-host Richard Beattie, who we don't do the episodes together anymore, but it was a great joy to be with him this year and doing these episodes. And that was, like I said, a really great episode. So hopefully you'll enjoy

I just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio.com, you'll find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more. Many of us feel hurried, and did you know that being in a hurry is costing us more than we realize? Hi, I'm Jem Fadling, co-host of Unhurried Living, where my husband Alan and I help people learn to live and lead from fullness rather than on empty. We provide resources and training to teach you healthy patterns for rest, work, and spiritual connection. With more than 25 years of experience at the intersection of spiritual formation and leadership development, Unhurried Living seeks to inspire others to rest deeper, live fuller, and lead better. Join us each week as we continue to have conversations about leadership, soul care, the power of prayer, and much more. You can find Unhurried Living at lifeaudio.com and on your favorite podcasting app.