How Is It Going?

It’s only seven days into the new year, but most of us need a check-in. All of the resolutions we made for 2025 are looming large in front of us. How are we going to accomplish them, in fact how are we going to stick to even one of them over the long haul?

It’s not unusual to set goals that are beyond our natural reach, feeling in the moment that we can do anything if we set our mind to it. In fact the wisest man ever to live, apart from Jesus had this to say:

 I said in my heart, “I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me, and my heart has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.” ¹⁷ And I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a striving after wind.

¹⁸ For in much wisdom is much vexation,
    and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow. Ecclesiastes 1: 16-18

Solomon learned, what we need to – trying to do it on our own leads to frustration and sometimes sorrow.

Does that mean we don’t need to set goals or have aspirations? Certainly not! The question is, who is the master builder of your life? John 15:5 says:

⁵ I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

When we bring our goals, our aspirations, our dreams before the vine and ask Him which ones we should believe and strive for, He has a way of downloading strategy that you never even thought of. For Isaiah told Israel:

² I will go before thee, and make the crooked places straight: I will break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron:

³ And I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that I, the Lord, which call thee by thy name, am the God of Israel. Isaiah 45:2-3

Selah