Here we are at the beginning of another year.\u00a0 It is amazing how the last year closes its pages on 12 months of procrastination, mistakes, bad decisions, calamities, prayerlessness, faithlessness, no productivity, materialism and love for the world system, et cetera.\u00a0 And we believe the very next day somehow begins a different paradigm.\u00a0 Oh, we mean well with those resolutions and all.\u00a0 But we do not stick with any of them.\u00a0 Instead, we creep to the first day of the next year when we can again breathe a collective sigh of relief with the pseudo-certainty that the next 12 months will be different\u2014ad infinitum, ad nauseam.<\/p>\n
Somewhere people are reading this and saying with barely contained rancor, \u201cSee how this man rains on everyone\u2019s parade.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s not my intent.\u00a0 I just want people to realize that life is not necessarily corrected by flips of the calendar.\u00a0 It takes a conscious and dedicated effort to change what can and needs to be changed in us.\u00a0 A new calendar will not help anyone quit smoking tobacco.\u00a0 It certainly will not help a professing Christian to stop smoking spiritually.\u00a0 Vance Havener once said, \u201cI was born in the fire, and I\u2019m not about to die in the smoke.\u201d<\/p>\n
If professing Christians enter this year with great intentions of drawing nearer to God, and they again fizzle out, it might not turn out so well.\u00a0 At what point during January will they roll off into the same old pattern, again waiting on a new calendar before they consider becoming spiritually viable?\u00a0 2016 is going to be a very dangerous year.\u00a0 People should have already been preparing to face it.<\/p>\n
We need to be honest and open about how we have chosen to live our lives.\u00a0 If we will examine our hearts every day, and not wait to repent over our sins and submit to God for correction, we will have 365 days of progress.\u00a0 Even a snail could theoretically crawl 17 to 100 miles in a year, depending on the type of snail.\u00a0 Oh but we\u2019re Americans. We want progress quick and easy. \u00a0We would like going from being lazy to being energetic and productive to be like hopping in our car and going to the mall.\u00a0 It won\u2019t happen.<\/p>\n
I would advise against making a decision or resolution today. \u00a0Given the track record of those wishes, it might be better to procrastinate until we really mean it.\u00a0 Why break another list of \u201cI\u2019m really going to do it this time\u201d?<\/p>\n
Tomorrow, or better yet, Sunday, sit alone somewhere and pray.\u00a0 Consider all the advancements of evil over the last year.\u00a0 It could not have occurred if every professing Christian were a true Christian. \u00a0If they had all been prayerful, faithful, devout, sanctified, and courageous, Satan would have tucked his tail and slunk off to wait for a better opportunity.<\/p>\n
Does that wake us up?\u00a0 Does it make us willing to be what we are supposed to be?\u00a0 Does it inspire us to fully surrender to God?\u00a0 Then, we should get on our knees and settle our affairs with God.\u00a0 Either we do it now and determine to work on progressing the rest of our lives, or we wait for the few moments of relief January 1, 2017\u2014if those moments are available the next time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Here we are at the beginning of another year.\u00a0 It is amazing how the last year closes its pages on 12 months of procrastination, mistakes, bad decisions, calamities, prayerlessness, faithlessness, no productivity, materialism and love for the world system, et cetera.\u00a0 And we believe the very next day somehow begins a different paradigm.\u00a0 Oh, we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,9,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-for-the-remnant","category-the-importance-of-prayer","category-uncategorized","post-preview"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paIm2N-hn","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1077"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1077"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1077\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1419,"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1077\/revisions\/1419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}