Bought with a Price

I’ve never been much for New Years resolutions. After all, most of them are about making me better – “I’ll lose 20 lbs. this year”, “I’ll keep my room clean”, “I’ll start working on Christmas cards in November”, or perhaps the more negative side of things, “I’ll stop smoking”, “I’ll stop looking at porn”, “I’ll stop getting angry at people”. Of course, there are always “spiritual” resolutions: “I’ll read my Bible for 15 minutes a day”, “I’ll pray for everyone I know once a week”. Maybe it’s the specificity of these that rankles just a little. What if it actually mattered that I read for 30 minutes tomorrow? Would I stop short?

Why do we write New Years resolutions? It is because we try and fail. We try to lose weight, or read the Bible every day, or complete a project only to find that we put on a couple more pounds, miss our reading on Jan 11th, and don’t finish things. We believe it is our will and determination that makes the difference. Each year we fool ourselves into thinking we have more of those qualities on the first of the calendar year than at other times.

The greatest resolver I know of was Jonathan Edwards, who made his list in 1722-23. They were not for the New Year, but an expanding list of resolutions (eventually numbering around 70) that he added to for a period of months that detailed the principles and actions that would mark his life. There is no mention of how often he might do something (except a reminder to read these weekly), or for how long. There is no mention of fitness goals; in the 18th century it was sufficient to avoid dying.
Edwards begins:

“Being sensible that I am unable to do anything without God’s help, I do humbly entreat him by his grace to enable me to keep these Resolutions, so far as they are agreeable to his will, for Christ’s sake.”

He starts off on the correct footing. Edwards understood the battle between the flesh and the spirit, and did not trust that he could live a life worthy of his Lord apart from His help. His resolutions are anchored in faith. Of course there is work in faith (1 Thess. 1:3, 2 Thess. 1:11, James 2:26), but our faith is the basis for our actions.
His first is as follows:

“1. Resolved, that I will do whatsoever I think to be most to God’s glory, and my own good, profit and pleasure, in the whole of my duration, without any consideration of the time, whether now, or never so many myriads of ages hence. Resolved to do whatever I think to be my duty, and most for the good and advantage of mankind in general. Resolved to do this, whatever difficulties I meet with, how many and how great soever.”

That sounds like a taller order than losing twenty pounds. You should read the rest; some of them are quite interesting, such as the following:

“10. Resolved, when I feel pain, to think of the pains of martyrdom, and of hell.”
“55. Resolved, to endeavor to my utmost to act as I can think I should do, if I had already seen the happiness of heaven, and hell torments.” July 8, 1723.

Many of the 70 are like this: focusing his attention away from the temporal world to the world to come. For Edwards, this was to see things as they are, not as they appear to our eyes. His passion was for the final glory of God, and he wanted to live his life in a way to increase his joy at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As I read them I realize that I need to keep seeking that things that are above, to walk by faith and not by sight, and to fix my hope completely on the revelation of our Lord Jesus. I can only do this through God’s power.

As far as specifics go, I resolve to blog more often, only one of many things I have determined to do at which I have failed in the last year.

Happy New Year to you all.

I just submitted my new book, Porn Free: Finding Renewal through Truth and Community, to Lightning Source for final publishing. The long process of getting this project done is finally over (I think). I’ll upload the cover art and a sample chapter soon, so you won’t mind the wait too much for it to be available on Amazon.

Update: It’s now available! Click here to order on Amazon, or go to the Costly Grace Media web site for more information.

I’m happy to say that the upcoming book, Porn Free: Finding Renewal through Truth and Community, is in pre-production, and should be published soon. When is soon? Well, it’s always hard to say, but I would expect to see it on Amazon by mid-September.

Having said that, this project has been full of delays, but through it all I think you’ll be pleased with the results. The first manuscript was completed over a year ago, and the last year has been devoted to relentless editing and rewriting. I had a great deal of help, and learned many lessons. I’m quite used to speaking, but writing is not like speaking. My good friend Christine Walker, a content editor with McGraw Hill Publishing, had me rewrite a lot of it, and helped me become a better writer. I owe her a great debt for her patient assistance, and I have been blessed by her constant prayer for this project.

Right now, we’re working on cover design, and the last touches on the internal formatting. Then it’s off to Lightning Source, and on to Amazon. The book will be available in paperback and Kindle versions.

Watch here for news, or drop me a line if you want to be notified when it’s available. Thanks to all who have been waiting patiently for it.

I’ll start posting excerpts here so you can get a sneak peek soon.

“O LORD, my heart is not lifted up; my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me.” (Psalm 131:1-2)

I spend a lot of time thinking about the effects of our digital age on our minds, and especially on the spiritual life of the Christian. My primary ministry is with college students, and I see how important technology is to every moment of their lives. However, it’s not just they who are affected: I also breathe in the digital spirit of our age, and what I have been breathing in has changed me.

What I have noticed in my own life is that it is much harder for me to concentrate on just one thing without my mind wandering than it used to be. If I open my Bible to read and meditate for a while, another part of my brain informs me that it has been a while since I checked my email, or I remember that I need to send a text message to somebody about something. If I’m praying it’s even worse: a hundred possible interruptions come to mind when I am trying to seek the Lord.

Much of this cannot be laid at the feet of technology. I’ve always been highly distractible. As a child I was a daydreamer, and had difficulty staying on task, or remaining in my seat at school. We had no ADD diagnosis for me to hide behind back then, so I was left at the mercy of every teacher looking for an infraction of order in the classroom. Digital technology has not improved that for me. I can scan through a hundred blog articles in my RSS feed, but sitting down and thinking deeply about a verse of Scripture, or listening for the voice of God does not come easily.

Writing years before the digital age in his book, No Little People, Francis Schaeffer made the following observation:

“People today are afraid to be alone. This fear is a dominant mark of our society. Many now ceaselessly sit in the cinema or read novels about other people’s lives or watch dramas. Why? Simply to avoid having to face their own existence… No one seems to want (and no one can find) a place of quiet — because, when you are quiet, you have to face reality. But many in the present generation dare not do this because on their own basis reality leads them to meaninglessness; so they fill their lives with entertainment, even if it is only noise… The Christian is supposed to be very opposite: There is a place for proper entertainment, but we are not to be caught up in ceaseless motion which prevents us from ever being quiet. Rather we are to put everything second so we can be alive to the voice of God and allow it to speak to us and confront us.”

If only he had lived to see our generation, with its constant Facebook activity, Twitter postings, email, smart phones, and continual “connectedness” at all hours of the day!

So how do we quiet our souls before the Lord? How do we get the voices of the sirens of technology to still?

The technology is here to stay, so any thought of “disconnecting” will be fruitless for most of us. The Amish don’t want you in their community, and you don’t know how to do anything useful, like care for livestock or build a fence anyway. We have to find ways of retreating from our laptops and mobile phones to meet the Lord, if only for a while.

I find that taking walks helps, especially if there are few distractions like cars and people. For some reason, getting out into nature makes a difference, even if it’s the tiny acre of natural beauty at the little park at the end of my street. Lonely beaches, hiking trails, and (surprisingly) golf courses are good spots. But it’s not about the location.

What really makes the difference is being patient with your tendency toward mental self-distraction. In Psalm 131, David says that he has calmed and quieted his soul. For us, that will take time, and we will face a number of failures as we do so. If you take the time to quiet your soul before God, not kicking yourself every time another competing thought intrudes, but waiting patiently for the voices to subside, you will find that place you need to be in order to hear the voice of God. Cut yourself a little slack; you’re out of practice.

What has helped you? Leave a comment.