By Not Known
To many of us, the New Year means making new resolutions. As we take stock of the year that has passed us by, we would resolve to begin the New Year by initiating fresh inroads into the improvement of various areas of our lives.
Often we make resolutions that would centre on enhancing our own happiness. I am afraid we may be in danger of barking up the wrong tree, even though this search for happiness has always been the perennial human quest ever since our first parents were evicted out of Eden. There is simply no scriptural basis for us who name the name of Christ to make happiness our sole pursuit in quest.
Rather, I believe that our Lord’s injunction to ‘seek first His kingdom and His righteousness‘ (Mt 6:33a) should be the locus which any of our attempts at major life-transforming New Year resolutions originate from. Happiness then, would come as one of the ‘all these things that will be given to you as well‘ (Mt 6:33b) that God promised us when our life priority is correct and our hearts are in the right place.
The Christ-centred locus is especially vital in counteracting the often subtly silent influences of materialism, hedonism, egotism, relativism and the like, upon the Christian mind. It will also guard us against those half-bred pseudo-Christian world-views that spring from the illegitimate marriage of compromise between Christian and pagan world-views. Indeed, that constant warning for us to guard our hearts above all else (Pro 4:23) can only be ignored or neglected, in a time and age like ours, at our own peril.
How do we know what to do in order to ‘seek first His kingdom and His righteousness‘? A way to start is to read the word of God, not only to understand it intellectually but to go a step further by obeying it so as to allow God to transform our lives and all that we do. So even as we begin the New Year, let us ask God to give us a pair of ‘new ears‘ that would listen to Him and obey Him.
Wishing you a blessed Christ-centred New Year with ‘new ears‘.