Resolved

 "This one thing I do; forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead." Philippians 3:13

Someone said that we make countless resolutions, but we never resolve anything. Most of us find this to be true every January. We make a resolution involving change, but little if anything in our lives changes. Big or small, major or minor, we mostly stay the same, plodding on in our spiritual and emotional mediocrity, or worse, regressing more and more into death and darkness. We make resolutions with good intentions, but lack the will to live them out because we lack the power to live them out. So we close the year in the same condition, or worse, that we entered into it.

This is not what it is to be for a believer, yet too often, it is. Why?

A great part of the answer is that we are blind to what the real root issues are. They are not really physical or even mental, but spiritual. We are spiritual beings held captive by a spiritual darkness that works through the physical and mental. This captivity will not be broken by our own will. Yes, the human will can be strong and even throw off certain behaviors and addictions, but even those who have done so continue to see themselves as only a step, bad choice, or failure away from returning to that captivity. The captive continues to see themselves as captives. Neither their mind or their spirit ever really becomes free.

Most of us though do not possess a will that can at least on the surface, break free. We try, and even make it a ways before falling. Often we expect to fail. We don't really believe we can be free. Sometimes, we don't really want to be free. We've made the resolution, but we've not resolved the actual issue. We've not come to that place where we do the "one thing." The one thing above all things. The one thing that can only happen in Christ.

Someone said "give me the one thing I do, rather than the thousand things I dabble in." Our fallen natures have made us dabblers. In Christ we are given abundant life and full freedom, but we must resolve to live in it. We can't dabble in that life, but must enter into it with all our hearts. Nothing can be more desired than that life. It comes with the fullness of His Spirit, and as another said, "If there is anything in your life that you desire more than being filled with His Holy Spirit, you will never be filled with His Holy Spirit." Those who live in the fullness of His Spirit have resolved that they would allow nothing to keep them from that fullness. In the resolving, they received the fullness. Victory, freedom, healing, cleansing, transformation, all of these will take place in us when we resolve that we shall have them. When we resolve to do so, we surrender all that would keep us from them. We become empty of all the obstacles to His fullness so that we might be filled with all that is Him. We're no longer dabblers, but partakers.

Issues. We all have them. It's part of living in a fallen world. What we do with these issues is key. Do we make resolutions about them, or resolve them in Christ? Each of us have "issues" that have caused us pain and harm. Very likely, our resolutions to overcome them hasn't worked. We dabbled in overcoming them, but eventually, succumbed to them once more. Let us cease the dabbling. Let us bring the issues to Him, and in Him, resolve them once and for all. His Word promises that He makes all things new. It is time, past time, for Him to do so in us. Let Him write, by His Spirit, "resolved" over them. May this new year be truly new for all of us.

Blessings,