Are New Year's Resolutions Helpful or Not?

Most Christians have kind of a love/hate relationship with resolutions. Are resolutions helpful or not? Is it a good thing to make resolutions about what you intend to do in the future or not? Does a resolution have the power to bring about sanctification and transformation in your heart? If I have struggled with an explosive temper or some sinful habit, and January 1 comes and I make a resolution to change… Does that actually do anything to bring about spiritual change?

When you look at your track record with past resolutions, you might be inclined to think, “No, they don’t do a bit of good. They are worthless.”  But then on the other hand, think about this – times in your life when you have made a change, didn’t that start in most cases with a decision to change? If you’re not even willing to resolve to change, you will never even take the first step. So you have to have resolution.

Here’s why I think people have a love/hate relationship with resolutions: They expect the resolution itself to do the entire job. And when it doesn’t (and it never does), they are disillusioned.  Resolve, by itself, is not powerful enough to bring about change.  So when you make a resolution, but then you don’t also do the other things that are also necessary, and so you fail – you think, “Making resolutions is worthless.” But that’s not true.

That’s like saying, “I want to go to the store” – then you get into your car, turn the key, start up the engine, sit there in the garage for an hour.” Then you go back in the house and say, “Turning the key does nothing. It’s a complete waste of time.” Turning the key is not bad – it accomplishes everything it’s supposed to accomplish. And you’re not going to get to the store if you skip that step. It’s just that that step alone is not enough. Resolve is the first step to change, but it’s not enough by itself. It has to be followed by the other six steps we are going to study. But don’t ever think that resolve is not important. I want to show you from Scripture that it is.

More than 200 times in the Psalms alone the psalmist says, “I will…”  Listen to David in Ps.101.

Psalm 101:2-4  I will walk in the way of a blameless life-- when will you come to me? I will walk in my house with blameless heart.  ³ I will set before my eyes no vile thing. The deeds of faithless men I hate; they will not cling to me.  ⁴ Men of perverse heart shall be far from me; I will have nothing to do with evil.

Is that prideful, to claim that you are going to do be so righteous? Isn’t that boasting? It would be boasting if his purpose were to claim that he will succeed in all this. But that’s not his purpose. His purpose is not to make a claim but to simply state the resolve of his heart. Those statements in Ps.101 are not claims. They are statements of resolve.  

Resolutions are not worthless. They are crucially important. They are not enough in themselves to do the whole job of transformation, but they are the first step.