Happy New Year’s! 

By the time you read this post, I am on my way back from Urbana 06 in St.Louis.  2007 is here, and I’ve just counted-down to the new year with 25,000 other people in a crowded stadium.  Nevertheless, however far apart you and I may be, in a large crowd or by yourself, this is the time to start things anew–the calendar giving us a fresh start, a new beginning.

On my 23rd birthday earlier this past September, I reflected on a resolution for the next year:

Over these past 12 months, I have dwelled and tried to live out Philippians 3:13-14… and maybe it is just the Holy Spirit’s work in me that has me forgetting so much of the past.  By His grace & Spirit I have tried hard to strain forward to what lies ahead, and as I grow older it is just kind of bittersweet to see all that I would be leaving behind, metaphorically speaking.  For the next 12 months, I earnestly pray and hope that I can be disciplined by His grace, to live a humble orthodoxy, and be dead to sin and alive to God… for this is my birthday resolution:

But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Philippians 3:7-11, ESV

May we continue to examine and re-examine our lives to see which areas of our lives need to be transformed by the Spirit’s indwelling and empowerment.

Continue reading “On this day 23 years ago“…