Altar Call – Opelika-Auburn News

Walter Albritton

January 6, 2013

 

Resolve to make 2013 the finest year of your life

      T’ is the season to ridicule the making of New Year resolutions. The critics say it is a futile exercise. Failing to keep our lofty resolutions, we create unnecessary guilt for ourselves.

      Such logic is persuasive. So much so that I finally gave up making a list of resolutions for each new year. It was depressing to admit that my intentions had dissolved before the end of January.

      That being said, I want to make a case for the splendid word “resolve.” Resolve is not a bad word. To the contrary it is the key to success in the game of life.

      Few things worth doing are ever accomplished until someone becomes determined to achieve a particular goal. That is what “resolve” means – to settle on an objective and go after it wholeheartedly.  The person who is “resolute” about a goal will stick tenaciously with the plan until the goal is reached.

      Failure in life results often from allowing inertia to win the day. We get tired of trying and become sluggish. Instead of staying fixed on our goal we become wishy-washy or irresolute. In the vacuum of inactivity life becomes stagnate.

      The good news is that we need not be controlled by laziness; we can will to win and persevere until victory is ours. We can, in a word, resolve to let nothing deter us from reaching our goal.

      Considering the new year just begun we can determine to make it our best year ever. We know what works for our benefit and what works against us. We know that boundaries are essential and that discipline is necessary to become the best that we can be. We know that success does not come easy and that there is a price to be paid for excellence.

      Since my teen years I have loved an old song that preachers love to use in revival meetings. The words grab me and motivate me to stop playing in shallow water and risk wading into the deep water of faith. Perhaps you have heard and sung this inspiring song:

I am resolved no longer to linger,

Charmed by the world’s delight;

Things that are higher,

Things that are nobler,

These have allured my sight.

I will hasten to Him,

Hasten so glad and free,

Jesus, greatest, highest,

I will come to Thee.

      As I live out the days of 2013 I am resolved to rise up every morning and “hasten” to Jesus for I find in him the desires of my heart. He fulfills my hunger for meaning and my thirst for a life that matters.  I want to live every minute under the Lordship of Jesus and honor him with every breath I take and every decision I make.

In this I am totally resolved, with no reservations.

      As you reflect on the gift of life and your use of it, about what can you say with dogged determination, I am resolved?

      Resolutions are optional. To be resolute is not! + + +