God’s New Years Resolutions For Us
As it was the final CCM: City Centre meeting before we broke up for Christmas and New Years, we wanted to utilise this time of making new years resolutions. During this break from our city centre meetings, it can be easy to fall into a blissful limbo where no imminent demands are pulling us up and out each day to serve others. Church responsibilities may get a few weeks off from time to time but our personal relationships with God never should. We should always be listening for what challenges He calls us to, each day.
New years resolutions often aim to pull us out of our comfort zone, into new challenges to better us, excite us and build us, but that’s the calling God has on our lives everyday. God never calls us to stagnate, the role is always there to declare God’s love to people.
We looked at Jeremiah 1 to reflect on how God prompted Jeremiah to be obedient to the task God had called for his life. The chapter details a loving conversation between Jeremiah and God and paints a beautiful picture of God’s fatherly nature prompting his child, Jeremiah to step up to the challenge, in spite of Jeremiah’s feelings of inadequacy.
Jeremiah 1 v 6-10: “Alas, Sovereign Lord,” I said, “I do not know how to speak; I am too young.”
But the Lord said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am too young.’ You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you,” declares the Lord.
Then the Lord reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, “I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant.”
God calls all of us individually, wherever we’re at in life and whatever our skills and passions are, to join with Him so that we can play our part in sharing God’s loving truth with others. Every single person is valuable to God’s relentless mission of love. God promises to equip us for these challenges and stand with us throughout. However it can be hard sometimes to discern what it is God may be calling us to do over our coming weeks, months and lifetimes. Friends much wiser than me, encouraged me to reflect on these questions, and I want to share these with you guys today, so that this Christmas time, we can reflect on what God may be calling us to do into the new year.
1. What does God like about you? For more inspiration you can reflect on the gifts of the Spirit (1 Corinthians 12 v 4-11; Romans 12 v 6-8), but also think beyond that. We all have unique qualities/resources/jobs etc that God can work through.
2. What callings or promises does God have on our lives or over the next few weeks?
3. What areas in our walk with God do we want to grow? Maybe evangelism; theology; discipleship; leadership etc.
4. How will we go about doing this? Eg. Accountability partners, daily goals to remain obedient to, taking new opportunities?
Finally we discussed people in our lives who we want to see come to God. In order to encourage us in prayer or sharing with people, we looked at their spheres of influence that could be transformed if God transforms their lives. If sharing the gospel can be confusing, we also practised the 3 world’s diagram, which simplifies explaining the gospel story. This technique can be found by clicking here.
Please get in touch if there’s anything you’d like more information on or anything you’d like prayer for. We seek to always be a serving community whether we can meet every week or not.
To quote Jeremiah 1 v 17 from the amplified bible, this Christmas let’s “gird up our loins in preparation”, for the tasks that God has for us, praying diligently and serving faithfully.
If you’d like to find out more information about us and to stay tuned of exciting updates for the city centre over the coming months, head to the CCM:City Centre page, contact Tom, like us on Facebook or come along to Costa at 7.30pm on a Tuesday evening.
We’d love to have you.