Resisting Resistance: Your First Resolution
With a new year upon us, billions of people around the globe will make resolutions to change things about their lifestyles for the better. Even though the date change has little physical impact on life and is clearly psychological, with a new year comes a sense of a fresh start and a new hope for a ‘better’ year than the last. The sad truth is, the majority of resolutions made on January 1 of any year never make it into March.
Although this verse is slightly taken out of context, I felt Paul really hit the nail on the head when thinking of the changes I plan to make in my own life and how hard it is to make a lifestyle change under any circumstance.
I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do… For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing.
Romans 7:15, 18-19
This January, gyms will see a 30% increase of traffic on their equipment and in their ‘New Membership’ files, but something like 60-70% of these new recruits will never make it to the summer still regularly attending the gym.
From the moment the ball drops, millions around the globe every year vow to not take a another puff of a cigarette or taste one more drop of alcohol, however over 5 million world-wide will die by December despite their lifelong attempts to abandon their destructive habits.
Likewise, the majority of families across the country decide the new year is a time ‘to save more and spend less’, but most will limp through December in more debt than they were eleven months earlier and plan to make the same resolution for the new year to come.
The problem with change is the natural (and maybe even spiritual) resistance that begins haunting your every thought. There are so many reasons your can’t or shouldn’t continue on with your new way of life, but how can you be sure you will love where you are in a year and not just be another resolution statistic?
You have to realize without making one resolution your first pledge, most of your New Year’s dreams will never come to pass. What is your first resolution of 2011, you ask?
This year, you MUST choose to resist resistance.
In the blogs to come, I will outline a few of the overlooked checkpoints of this opposition that when cleared, will see you all the way to a better you!
