A Different Kind of Resolution

If you're like me, you haven't even begun to recover from Christmas, much less realize that Friday is New Year's Eve. And yet, ready or not, 2009 is coming quickly to a close.

With each new year, a guilty twinge creeps into my consciousness, whispering that I'm supposed to make a list of resolutions. It's what you're "supposed" to do to better yourself.

When I was an optimistic young girl, I did make lists--exercise five times a week, read my Bible every day, be kinder to my brother.

But it never failed. Less than one month into a new year, and my clean slate started getting red marks on it. I'd break one resolution, then another. And before I knew it, I just gave up, once again feeling worthless that I couldn't be perfect in one thing for even a measly thirty days.

And yet I think the problem was my resolutions were flawed from the start--I was always the one making up resolutions for myself rather than asking God what He would have me to do and then asking Him to help me obey Him in His strength rather than in my own.

All I really needed to do was look in His Word. Look at His commands.

As 2010 rushes near, my heart isn't really looking for a resolution. Rather, God has been drawing me to Christ's charge for Christians to share the gospel with a lost and dying world.

But I don't think it's my heart alone that should be firmly resolved to get the Word out there, but should be the heart of every Christian as well.

During Jesus' ministry, He told His disciples, "'All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age'" (Matt. 28:18-20).

Later, after Christ's resurrection, He told those same disciples, "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth" (Acts 1:8).

In these two verses alone, Christ empowers you and me to act...but not so that we can fulfill our petty, individual desires. Instead, He empowers us for a greater purpose--to share the truth of Jesus, to teach God's word, to make Christian disciples.

It's an awesome charge not to be taken lightly, although many Christians do (myself included). It's a heavy command, yes, a command--Jesus says "go" not "go if you are brave enough" or "go if you have the gift of convincing speech" and He says "you will" twice, not "you might."

Christ made this a command because He knows the outcome--heaven or hell. And He knows how many souls are at stake. Consider the statistics. 1.5 billion people have never heard the gospel of Jesus Christ (IMB "Who's Missing").

1.5 billion.

Wikipedia claims Yankee Stadium seats 50,000. So fill Yankee Stadium 30,000 times and that's how many people have never heard about Jesus, not counting the billions more who have heard of Jesus but not accepted Him as their Savior.

If each person who reads this would share Jesus with one each week in 2010. And if that one would share Jesus with another one....

As the famous preacher Charles Spurgeon said, "If sinners will be damned, at least let them leap to hell over our bodies. And if they will perish, let them perish with our arms about their knees, imploring them to stay. If hell must be filled, at least let it be filled in the teeth of our exertions, and let not one go there unwarned and unprayed for."