SNIPPET
it is in this context… not a blank cheque
5:16
principle
INTRO
blessed new year to you, wherever you are listening to this. if you haven’t already, now’s as good a time as any to reflect on the year past, and clarify your vision for the year ahead, or rather figuring out what God’s vision is, for you. if you’re like me, you have physical goals and plans, ambitions for your work life, school life, even church life. but what explicitly spiritual goals are you and i called to work towards? what principles can we lean on to ensure that we’re steering in the right direction, to ensure that all our new-year enthusiasm and excitement to be better is, in fact, honouring to God. which of our prayers for 2024 will God Himself be pleased to bless?
today, paul cheng shows us 3 sure-fire principles for us to honour God this year, they’re certain because they’re the promises of our Lord Jesus Christ, the promises you heard in the intro, which you might have memorised already, yet maybe sound too good to be true… but they’re not. Let’s find out why.
OUTRO
that was Paul Cheng’s message for the new year of 2024. As I was listening to Pastor speak, i was reminded of the 70 resolutions of Jonathan Edwards, a long and formidable list of spiritual guidelines the young preacher resolved to live his life by. if you get a chance, i’d recommend checking it out online. before he gets to resolution no.1, he writes a preface which includes the following line:
Being sensible that I am unable to do anything without God’s help, I do humbly entreat him by his grace to enable me to keep these resolutions, so far as they are agreeable to his will for Christ’s sake.
i suppose the danger of making resolutions, no matter how seemingly spiritual, is forgetting that apart from the grace of God, we’re powerless to keep but one of them. if we’re not careful we can confuse god-given burdens and desires with our own ambitions. the result of which is that common place we find ourselves in at the end of january or our holiday, or two weeks after a church camp. and so over time, having tried and failed, we grow jaded at the idea of resolutions. i guess that’s where today’s message comes in. that if our aims are one and the same as God’s, and our means to get there are none other than leaning on those everlasting arms, we can be confident. because we’ll be confident in God. not our resolutions.
and perhaps we’ll get to say with the psalmist, The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in him, and I am helped: (psalm 28:7)
thank you for joining us today. next monday, Paul Cheng will resume his series on the Epistle to the Philippians with part two on learning to be content. in the meantime, check back on wednesday for the 2nd last message in our series on Discipleship, and on Friday for a message on Christian leadership from pastor’s series on Exodus. until then, may the Lord find us tried and true.