It is the new year. Have you made your resolutions? I’ve made mine. Of course it includes a desire for greater holiness, I’m sure yours does too. Measures to achieve that? check. Read the bible through? check. Looks like I’m all pumped up and good to go!
But then I realised, haven’t we been through this year after year? What is missing amidst this grabbing at the ever-elusive holy life? A dear hymn brought forth the resolution to sum it all: Sweeter as the years go by. Yes! It is that desire to discover for ourselves more and more the sweet communion with our Lord Jesus Christ, to taste the sweetness of affirmation (Matt 25:21), discipline (Hebrews 12:6), blessings (Leviticus 26:4-10), trials (James 1:2-4). Not pitiful drudgery of religious practice, not fulfilling of sacred responsibilities, but to ENJOY the fellowship of Christ. C. Austin Miles wrote the hymn, In the Garden, that we don’t sing in church anymore, (perhaps we think it’s overly romanticised?). And He walks with me, He talks with me, and He tells me I am His own/ and the joy we share as we tarry there, none other has ever known. This garden is what we need!
And lest you think this is all abstract, I must clarify that all service, resolution toward holiness, even the desire for it comes from that communion! if we don’t yearn for that relationship, our pursuit will be religion, our efforts filthy rags. Which religion offers that intimacy? Count it a privilege, and our greatest gift and motivation. Fall in love with the Person again.
Sweet New Year!
“And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. ” Ephesians 3:18-19
