My New Year's Resolution

You know, there is just something about the beginning of a new year that causes us to examine our lives, reflect, evaluate and look to the future. The funny thing is that in reality, New Years Day is no different than the day before or the day to follow. Still, somehow, being the first day in a new calendar year gives it an almost supernatural quality, making it a portal into a new world. With this day we see the possibility for change, renewal and breakthroughs.
New Years Day presents us with the opportunity to close the door on a chapter of our lives and the prospect for new exploits, new victories are endless.

I’m not usually one for making the conventional resolutions. I don’t really like making a list of things I want to accomplish in the coming year. Face it, a year can be a long time, and resolutions fade quickly as the days slip by. Most of those resolutions and lists are lost or forgotten or abandoned usually within the first 2-6 weeks.
This year, I am making one resolution... one thing that I want to accomplish. With a list of one, it should be pretty easy to hold on to and to pursue. My resolution, my intent is that in the year 2010 I am resolved to focus on who I am in Christ.

In truth, there are two sides to who we are: there is STATUS, or where we stand in regard to God, and IDENTITY, or who we are inside. I am a man of covenant, and living breathing child of God. He calls me his son. I have been grafted into the vine, adopted into the family of God. In church circles, we call this being Born Again. This is my status or standing.
However that is just the beginning of it.
I desire to really see who I am.
Now to someone who is religious, that may sound pretty unreligious, especially when I so often preach against “I”. (When I comes first, we push God out of the way and we fall into sin.) But the New Testament tells us to put on the new man, created in the image of Christ. In a sense, that requires some focus on “I”.
I guess it is kind of a paradox, because it also requires focus on Christ, since the new me is created in His image.
The Lord showed me something a long time ago about mirrors that taught me how to look at myself. Sometimes I forget to do it, and that’s when I lose sight. This year I am going to keep my focus on the image I see in the mirror.
1 Corinthians 3:18 But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.

What do you see when you look into a mirror? Of course, you see your reflection. You see what you look like.
Now, imagine a man blind from birth. He may have an idea from feeling what his appearance is, but he has never seen his own face. On the other hand, that same blind man would recognize someone he knew by their voice and their manner.

The mirror of God reflects the nature and character, rather than the external appearance “as beholding in a glass the glory of the Lord.” Now that gets really good when you look up the meaning of glory.

Most of the time when we talk about New Year’s resolutions, our focus is on changing ourselves.
This is different, because what I’m talking about is releasing the changed or New Man that is within me because of the blood of Calvary.

This Year, more than ever before, I am intent on looking into the mirror of God.