The mother of all resolutions …

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So here it is, folks, the last day of 2014!

Do you have your resolutions, goals, plans, or objectives for 2015 all written out, or are you scrambling to come up with something to make it appear like you have a personal direction for the new year?

Why not make as the focus of the coming year what God desires the focus of your life to be?

What would that be?

That you become like Christ.

There is a legend about a king who longed for a son. Finally, to the joy of the king and the celebration of the palace, a baby boy was born. But the infant was born partially paralyzed. Years went by but the young boy remained in a wheelchair. The disappointed king ordered his sculptor to make a statue of a strong, virile man and to place that statue in the middle of the courtyard. When it was finished, the boy was wheeled out to the statue and was told the statue was the image of the man his father hoped he would become some day. The boy prince straightened himself a little in the chair. Everyday he was wheeled by that statue and every day he would try to straighten himself a little more. This continued until, one day, the young prince pushed himself up from the wheelchair and, on wobbly legs, stood looking at the statue with determination to be the man his father wanted him to be. Finally, in his early twenties, the prince walked confidently on strong legs across the palace courtyard, stood beneath the statue, looked up and saw a perfect likeness of himself.

Now, God has set the image of Jesus Christ in front of us as a model of what He wants us to become one day. Even though we have been partially paralyzed by sin, if we rely on Him daily, day by day we’ll grow and one day we will fully reflect His image.

“For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters,” Romans 8:29.

“This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ. Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth. Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church,” Ephesians 4:13-15.

The greatest direction any of us can have for our lives is the one God has for our lives – to become like Christ. How can you make that the central focus of your own life in 2015?

Scotty