Thinking Christian about New Year's Resolutions, Pt 3

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. Hey everyone, welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm your host, James Spencer, and today we're tackling a timely topic, hopefully, New Year's resolutions. But don't worry, this isn't just another episode about how to set better goals or stick to your gym routine. The last episode that I just aired from last year, actually, really does address a lot of that, and I think a lot of that is still relevant and important, but, you know, part of what I think I missed when I was talking about it last year was this idea that we need to really be nesting our goals and our ideas, allowing God to sort of refine those and reform those. And so, this time around, what I really want to think about is, how do we go about approaching our New Year's resolutions as an act of worship, as an act of discipleship? And so, instead of, you know, going back and just doing another episode about how to set better goals or stick to your gym routine or manage your finances better, all of which are very important ideas, we're going to explore why our typical approach to resolution may miss the mark and how a transformative God-centered perspective that's rooted in discipleship could actually reshape how we think about growth in the coming year. I will say that I've also written a piece for Christianity.com that will be posted here pretty soon, if it's not already. And so, if you wanted more information on that, I'll make sure that I link that in the description to the podcast and you could go over there and read some of that. This year, I'm going to be coming out with a number of different pieces on discipleship and what I'm calling the unbalanced life. And so, we'll be addressing some of these issues a little bit more deeply as we go throughout the year. But I think this is a good place to start. You know, it's important for me to sort of step back and look at what I did last year in the episode that just recently played and offer sort of what I would consider a gentle critique of certain practical approaches to New Year's resolutions. And that's really what I offered last year was the practical approach. You know, every year, millions of people resolve to eat healthier and exercise more, spend less money, or finally read that stack of books that are gathering dust. And those goals are often presented as practical and manageable and measurable. We hear a lot about maybe smart goals and those kinds of things. Three words that, you know, practical, manageable, and measurable really help us to guarantee to make us feel like we're doing something worthwhile. And while I think there are a number of things that we can do that are really good from a New Year's resolution perspective, my concern is that we're settling for change when what we really want is transformation. And so it's not that the practical approaches are inherently bad. You know, what I said last year in last year's episode that I just replayed, I think those are still really important steps and really important ideas. But I think there's a bigger context that we have to pay attention to. So practical approaches, they can be really helpful, but they often fail because they tend to be surface level solutions to deeper issues. They're practical resolutions and they tend to focus on behavioral modification rather than heart transformation. They're about fixing ourselves rather than being remade by the one who created us. So if we consider the language we often use around resolutions, you know, I just need more willpower, or this year I'm really going to make myself better. These statements reveal this sort of underlying assumption that I don't think many of us actually believe that we're doing it, that, you know, and our strength is what we have to rely on. But if we think about what scripture talks about, it talks about when I am weak, then I am strong. And so what we want to do is we want to recognize that we're sort of at the end of our ropes on a lot of this, that when we're trying to change ourselves, we're really shorting what God can do. He doesn't always, it's not that he never works through our strength, but often it's when we have these weaknesses that we open ourselves up to God. We recognize that we're dependent on him and we show ourselves to be willing to be changed by him. So I think these statements kind of like, you know, I just need more willpower or this year I'm really going to make myself better. Those kinds of statements, they do reveal an underlying assumption that we can be the architects of our own transformation. And it's the same sort of self-reliant mindset that has fueled every self-help trend since the dawn of time. But I think scripture really does tell us a different story. We're not the primary agents of change or what I would say, primary errant agents of transformation in our lives. God is the agent of transformation in our lives. Philippians 2.13, it reminds us that it's God who works in us to will and to act according to his good purpose. And I think that part of the problem we may have as we pursue New Year's resolutions or really goals of any kind, is that when we ignore that reality, when we ignore that God really is the starting point, that God is the underlying reality that we're trying to tap into and that that underlying reality should shape everything else that we do. When we miss that, we run the risk of doing good things that will distract us from or take us away from God. 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, you know, I've read various books, various theologians have critiqued, for instance, the health and fitness industry. And I think that's an appropriate critique because, you know, having worked in it, I think you do see an awful lot of times something that is a reasonable and helpful goal. You know, right now we live in a world where we're more sedentary than maybe other generations. You know, we don't, we don't go out and work in fields. We don't do a lot with our hands. Many of us are working desk jobs. I know I do. And so there's an appropriate space for the health and fitness industry to say, well, if we're going to be working these sedentary jobs, we probably should have some movement at some point. That's a good thing. Health and fitness should be something that we concern ourselves about. But it shouldn't be something that we concern ourselves about in the sense that, you know, as a father of four, do I really need six pack abs? Probably not. I suppose it'd be kind of nice, but do I really have the time, the energy? Do I really want to make that the focus of my life? If the focus of my life becomes, you know, getting that sort of Instagram worthy six pack ab photo, right, that's a problem because ultimately the focus of my life needs to be growing in my discipleship. It needs to be growing closer to Christ and developing a more intimate relationship with him. Really being able to point to and glorify God more faithfully throughout my whole life. Now, can health and fitness play a role in that? Certainly. If I'm debilitated, if I can't move, if I'm in pain all the time, our physical bodies, what we often think of as just our physical bodies do impact our orientation to the world. They impact the way we feel in any given moment. They impact our emotions. And so we do need to have a certain level of physical fitness that will allow us to do the activities of discipleship in an appropriate manner. And so I don't think we should ignore things like health and fitness, but they can't be primary. They have to be sort of nested within our desire to serve the Lord. And so to the extent that we need to be fit in order to accomplish what God is giving us to accomplish, we need to attend to our fitness. Do we need to attend to our fitness beyond that? Not necessarily. I love lifting. I talk about it a lot on the podcast. It's it's fun for me. It's something that I do as a hobby and I just really enjoy it. There are times, and I would freely admit that I probably become a little too obsessed with it. But I've gotten better at that over the years. It now takes a backseat to a lot of other things. I still get it in when I can, but I'm not slavishly going into the gym. And I think, you know, particularly my wife knows it's important for me to do that. And and so we both tend to sort of make trade offs so that I can get to the gym and do my workouts and that kind of stuff. And it helps keep me sane

I don't think there's a problem with doing that, but I would say that if it becomes the central aspect of my life, it's not rooted in discipleship, that it becomes more important than pointing to and glorifying God. If it becomes sort of this obsessive moment in my life, that's a problem. So instead of starting with behavioral change, what if instead of beginning the new year with this list of tasks we think will make us better, what if we really began with a vision of the one who is truly good, true, and beautiful? What if our resolutions weren't about what we can do, but about who God is and how we can draw closer to him? And I think that brings us to the real concept that has captured the imagination of theologians throughout church history and really one that I think I'm growing in my interest in it is growing and I'm starting to rethink how I explain what's going on in the scriptures based on this basic idea. And that's the beatific vision. The beatific vision refers to the ultimate unmediated encounter with God's presence, a direct and transformative experience of seeing him as he truly is. It's the culmination of the Christian life, the face to face encounter Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 13, 12, Augustine, Aquinas, and countless others have written about how this vision of God is the fulfillment of every longing and the ultimate goal of human existence. But here's the catch. I think while the beatific vision is often associated with a life to come, it's also something we can begin to pursue now. And drawing closer to God in this life prepares us for the fullness of his presence in the next. And this pursuit is far more transformative than any practical resolution we could make. So if the beatific vision calls us to seek the face of God, the natural next question is, how do we draw closer to him? This isn't about earning his presence. It's about creating space in our lives to experience what he's already offering. I think of it in terms of developing a posture that orients us to God as opposed to, you know, think of it like, you know, turning your back on someone. That's a posture that we take up. And so what we're trying to do as we draw closer to the Lord, we're trying to reorient our posture in space so that God is the way I've been thinking about it lately is we're truing ourselves to a reference point and we're looking toward God. We're seeing God as this reference point that we're orienting ourselves to. And as we orient ourselves to him, open ourselves up to him as opposed to turning our back on him. This now creates the posture that we're trying to sustain through the year that will allow us to see what God is doing, to draw closer to him, to recognize his presence in our lives more and 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 there's a few sort of practical things that I think we can do to help us adopt and sustain that posture. The first one is, I think we need to commit to rituals. Rituals often get a bad rap in modern Christianity. They can feel kind of stiff or legalistic. But the truth is, rituals are pretty powerful tools for forming our hearts and minds. And so the rhythms of prayer and scripture reading and worship and fasting, those aren't just empty practices. They're opportunities to encounter God. They reorient our posture. So, for instance, just consider beginning each morning with a time of prayer and meditation on scripture, not just reading to check it off a list, but actually savoring the word, asking God to speak through it and reflecting on how it shapes your life. And I think those small daily rituals can be really powerful as a foundation for intimacy with God. But I would also say is be creative. You know, reading and praying in the morning is something that you almost always hear. But I also think that, you know, church attendance on Sunday could become a ritual. For many of us, and I would say, and I've talked about this on other podcasts too, it's a challenge for me. Attending church is a challenge because my kids play sports. They do travel sports. We're often out of town on the weekends. Sometimes I travel for work, which makes it very difficult for me to make it back on Sundays sometimes. But I think what I'm going to try to do this year is attend a church, try to be in worship on Sunday morning, even if it's just watching the live stream of my church on YouTube, like actually trying to be present and worship every Sunday morning. As opposed to just, I'm out of town. I'm going to set it aside. I won't do it today. Maybe I'll read my Bible later or whatever. But being intentional about creating that space within my week to make sure that I have time with God. I think the other aspect of this is, you know, we need to build a cadence of life that creates space for God. We live in a pretty fast-paced culture. And one of the biggest barriers to experience God's presence, I think, is just simply our lack of time. Now, when I say lack of time, I don't mean that we actually don't have enough time. I mean, we're filling up our time with things that don't necessarily draw us into the presence of God. We tend to fill every moment with some sort of noise or activity or distraction. And drawing closer to God requires this sort of countercultural commitment to slowing down. We think about the concept of Sabbath. It's not just a day off. It wasn't just, hey guys, you've been working hard all week. Go sit around, watch football, have a beer, and do what you need to do to refresh yourself so you can get back at it on Monday. That's not what it was. It's an intentional time of rest in God's presence. What would it look like to build Sabbath-like moments into our daily life? Sabbath doesn't just have to happen every Sunday. The Sabbath principle can sort of extend itself. We actually see this in the Old Testament where you have different sorts of Sabbaths happening. They're not all called Sabbaths. You know, I know technically they're, you know, Sabbath is the seventh day. I get that part. But we also have, let's say, the sabbatical year, right? This is something that people in academics are pretty familiar with. You take a sabbatical year off. Well, you know, in the Old Testament, you had every seven years, you'd have this year, you know, where you'd take it off. I think we could build that into our days. I think we probably, at this point, need to build it into our days because part of what Sabbath is trying to remind us of is that our work is not meaningless. Our work is actually pretty meaningful, but that our work is to be grounded in, rooted in, understood as imitating God's work in creation. And it's supposed to, this rest is supposed to remind us that we've been redeemed from slave-like labor to other forces. So we have in, for instance, Exodus 20, the Sabbath command is rooted in creation. We're to take the seventh day off because God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh. And so that's what I mean when we're talking about the effortful, the meaningful effortness of our work, but that work doesn't have to be never-ending. It is supposed to have this moment with God, this moment after the work is done where we are experiencing God in a fresh and unique way, leaving that Sabbath holy, setting it apart. I think we could build that into our days. I don't know exactly how. Right now, what I've been kind of experimenting with is, you know, doing more of a, and this is something that was in a book called Deep Work. You know, you kind of do these deep concentrated times of work for about four hours and then you need to take a break. And I think in that structure is an interesting space for us to play around with Sabbath-like moments. So instead of just taking a break to, let's say, get a cup of coffee or use the restroom or whatever, you know, obviously you can do those things. But I also think taking that break as a mini Sabbath within our day could be really powerful. And it would create a different sort of cadence to the way we think about our work, think about our activity levels, and remember that these times, all of this time, really is to be set apart for God. There's no aspect of our lives that's outside of a time when we should be worshiping God. I think in Exodus, like I said, it's rooted in creation. Sabbath is rooted in creation. But when we move to Deuteronomy, it's actually practiced as a moment of remembrance of the Exodus. So the Sabbath is to be practiced because it's a time to remind us that we are not now subject to the difficult labor that Pharaoh put upon the Israelites. And that in the Sabbath, they're recognizing that they've been redeemed by God and brought into a different sort of administration. They now serve a sovereign that doesn't have any

in for us and that we've been freed not to work ourselves to the bone or to slave away at different things, we can now be restful at certain points. And so it's really important, I think, that we could actually build that cadence of life that creates this sort of space for God, whether it's daily, whether it's weekly, whether it's monthly, whatever it is, there are these times where we can actually create space for God. And again, I'm not talking about that in terms of, hey, take a vacation more often or, you know, mindlessly watch television. I think this is an intentional time where we engage God, where we thank him, where we are in gracious awe of him. We're really just trying to figure out how it is that we make this space to be with God. And that could take a number of different things. I think if we thought about what it looks like to build Sabbath-like moments into our lives, it could just be as simple as taking a walk without your phone. It could be journaling about how you've seen God at work or simply sitting in silence and focusing on his nearness. Whatever it is that we do, we're trying to engage with God in meaningful ways without distraction. And so I think that's an important aspect that we could build into this. And then finally, I, and this is something that I, you know, one of my favorite passages is Malachi 3.10. And so the third thing that I would suggest that people do is need to test God by trusting God. You know, it sounds a little provocative because we're so used to not testing God, but Malachi 3.10, God actually invites his people to test him. And the people have been withholding offerings from the temple because there's some sort of food shortage, what it seems like. And so God says, look, test me in this. You bring everything you're supposed to bring me to the storehouse and see if I won't throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing on you that there won't be not enough room to store it. And so what God's doing here is he's not promising, you know, this is not prosperity gospel stuff, right? Where the more you give, the more you'll get back. That's not what God's doing. What God's doing is he's challenging this underlying logic that is the way I like to think of it is the Israelites were doing math, they were doing arithmetic, like just adding and subtracting when they should have been doing calculus, right? The sort of math that I have no idea what it means. And so the Israelites are doing this simple math, right? They're saying, well, we don't have enough food. God really doesn't need the stuff that we bring to the storehouse. So we'll hold that part back and we'll use it for ourselves. God says, nope, that's wrong math. This is the time when you can't really add or subtract to figure this out. You got to do calculus. And so what he says is, honoring me is the secret to blessing in life. And if you honor me, if you trust me, if you really test me by trusting me, you will get different results than you can even imagine. It won't make any sense. You couldn't logic it out, right? You couldn't sit back and say, well, I think the best thing to do in a food shortage is really give more to God. That doesn't make any sense, right? From our logical sort of space, it doesn't make sense. But that's why, you know, honoring God means that we open ourselves up to opportunities for him to do more than we could ever ask or think. 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 I think this idea of testing God by trusting God is a really important one because it's not about testing God's patience. It's about taking steps of trust and letting him prove his faithfulness to us. It's about experiencing God's faithfulness in fresh ways. So, you know, that doesn't mean that we just, you know, go jump off a cliff and hope that God will rescue us, right? We see the temptation of Jesus. Jesus refuses to do these kinds of things. But I do think that there's a sense in which there are small promptings in our lives that God consistently makes and we're resistant to those because it doesn't make sense. It pushes us out of our comfort zone. It's taking us somewhere we don't want to go. I've often thought about this in terms of a detour sign, right? If you're driving down the road and you see a detour sign that says, you know, bridge out ahead. And you're going, man, that stinks because now I've got to go. I've got to take this whole detour. I've got to go around this bridge in the south. This is horrible. I don't want to do this. Yeah, you don't want to do it, but you still do because if the bridge is out and you drive up to it or you try to drive over it, you're probably going to get hurt. It's going to be far worse for you not to take the detour or not to ignore the detour sign than it is for you just to take the detour. And some really cool stuff could happen on the detour if you're paying attention. And I think God is sort of like that detour sign. He often takes us down paths that we really wouldn't go otherwise. Maybe they're not as quick as we want them to be. Maybe they're not leading us exactly where we want to go or it's not the most straightforward path. But following God is never the wrong answer. And so we should essentially think about following God like we would follow a detour sign. It may not make sense why they route us off a detour or some way, but we have to trust that God is leading us in the right path. And so I just say, you know, with regard to testing God by trusting God, you know, we need to be aware of those areas of our lives where we're hesitant to trust God fully. It could be our finances or our relationships or just a difficult decision that we've been avoiding. And I think this year we can resolve to take a leap of faith. Whether that's, you know, giving sacrificially or forgiving someone or following a nudge from the Holy Spirit. Let's just see how God meets us as we trust him. So that's sort of the third thing. So building in some rituals, creating a cadence, and then testing God by trusting God. That's how I think we are going to grow closer to him. Three ways that we can grow closer to him, at least, in the new year. Finally, let's talk about rooting our resolutions in discipleship. So these practices, I think, are going to tie into New Year's resolutions, but they just tie into general Christian living also. They shift the focus from achieving our goals to aligning our lives with God's purpose. And they remind us that transformation begins with worship, moves through trust, and is sustained by rhythms that make space for God's presence. As we enter the new year, then, let's not settle for resolutions that aim too low. Let's lift our eyes to the one who's called us into his glorious light. And let's make resolutions that begin with the vision of God and lead us deeper into his presence. Because the basic idea here is that we can change a lot of things about our life. And I would go back to the Tower of Babel narrative. I did a podcast on the Tower of Babel narrative. And basically, what I argue is that the effort to the tower builders are unrestrained and they're unguided. And so human capacity runs amok. They can do, so they do do. But in doing and building this city and tower, they ultimately are creating a structure, creating a cadence of life, creating an understanding of how to live in the world that would be apart from God. And that's a problem. And so our capacity to change is not zero. We have this fairly high capacity to change our world. We have a high capacity to do a lot of things. God has gifted us. And we can do a lot with those gifts. The problem is that when we do a lot with those gifts apart from God, we end up creating these structures and these systems and these artifices, right, that hinder us from growing closer to God. This is why I think in Deuteronomy 8, God warns the Israelites, hey, when you go into the land and you're living in houses you didn't build, drinking from cisterns that you didn't dig, you know, eating from fields that you didn't plant, don't forget me. Don't sit back and say, my own strength and my own power have gotten me all this wealth. God says, remember, I'm the one who gives you the strength and the power in the first place. And so what he's trying to get the Israelites, I think, to understand there is that we can't just focus on our own capacities. If we fool ourselves into thinking that we have inherently this capacity to do these things, what we miss

And so we can change. Absolutely, we can change. But at the end of the day, I don't think we really want change. I think what we want is transformation. We want the peace and joy, the calm, the integrity that comes from being transformed by God and being transformed in his presence. So that's what my hope is for the new year. Hopefully some of those conversations sort of helps that. Again, that previous episode that I posted last week on New Year's resolutions, I think it offers some really good practical tips. But I also think it probably needs to be nested in this conversation. I wouldn't even say probably. It needs to be nested within this conversation. If we cannot nest our lives in worship, if we can't understand that change is different than transformation, that changing our behaviors doesn't necessarily help us progress, but could be leading us down a path that distances us from God, even when we're doing good things. We have to root these things in discipleship. And that means that as Christians, we really need to commit to discipleship. If we need to do that in the new year, let's do that in the new year. In any case, I'll leave it there. Thanks for tuning into this episode of Thinking Christian. If you found this episode helpful, I'd love for you to share it with a friend or leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. As always, feel free to connect with me on social media and through my website at usefulthegod.com. And until next time, keep thinking, keep seeking, and above all, keep your eyes fixed on Jesus. Take care, everybody. 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. Is life feeling chaotic? I get it. I'm Rachel Wojo, host of the Untangling Life podcast. Don't miss the passionate encouragement and faith-based resources you need to help you clear your head and calm your heart. As Shell says, it feels like Rachel always knows what I need to hear. She keeps it real and is so humble. Her podcast is just the cherry on top. Enjoy Untangling Life with Rachel Wojo on lifeaudio.com or your favorite podcast app now.