New Year's Resolutions

NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS

Many people make New Year's resolutions.  We want to behave better in this New Year than in previous times.  We want to be better people and we want to be healthier than before.  For some of us, although it is only January 3, many of our resolutions are already broken.  We may have had good intentions but there's no visible evidence of change. 

During the time Jesus walked the earth, baptism was a sign of new life.  It still is today.  Why do people have water poured on them or their bodies immersed in water with a prayer?  Is it just like a new year's resolution or is there something more to it?

And so John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.  And this was his message: “After me comes the one more powerful than I, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie.  I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”  (Mark 1:4-5, 7-8 NIV)

John's message was that people needed to believe that life without God was broken and sinful.  They needed to confess their inability to live life on their own.  They needed to come to God, lay down their own independent way of doing things and choose to have God fill them with His power to enable them to live in a new way.  Baptism gives the picture of dying to self and coming back to new life in the power of the living God.  It speaks of Jesus Christ dying on the cross for our sin and then being raised from death by the power of God’s Holy Spirit. 

Have you forgotten that when we were joined with Christ, we joined him in his death?  For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism.  And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives. (Romans 6:3-4 NLT)
Baptism reminds us that resolutions, relying on our own power, will never work.   Fully relying on God's power, love and grace will give us the new life we are looking for in 2014 and beyond.  This new life begins as God miraculously changes us on the inside and this naturally flows out into our words and behaviour -- our visible life.  

Want a new life in 2014?  Let the resolutions rest and rely instead on God's power at work in you through Jesus Christ.

©2014 Partners in Hope