New Year's Resolutions

I was inspired by "New Year's Ambitions" at Holy Experience (scroll down to 12/30). Anne's verse for the year is "Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, and to attend to your own business and work with your hands." (I Thess. 4:11) Her thoughts on that are very insightful and challenging to me.

This morning I read this from Spurgeon's Morning and Evening:

"Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." "Grow in grace"-not in one grace only, but in all grace. Grow in that root-grace, faith. Believe the promises more firmly than you have done. Let faith increase in fulness, constancy, simplicity. Grow also in love. Ask that your love may become extended, more intense, more practical, influencing every thought, word, and deed. Grow likewise in humility. Seek to lie very low, and know more of your own nothingness. As you grow downward in humility, seek also to grow upward -having nearer approaches to God in prayer and more intimate fellowship with Jesus. May God the Holy Spirit enable you to "grow in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour." He who grows not in the knowledge of Jesus, refuses to be blessed. To know him is "life eternal," and to advance in the knowledge of him is to increase in happiness.

In order to lead that quiet life of faith Paul describes, I need more of grace, and more knowledge of Jesus this year. This verse is preceded by Paul's exhortation about diligence in pursuing holiness, and warnings to guard against doctrinal error. But he is not just advocating growth in knowledge (knowledge puffs up), but growth in grace AND knowledge. Grace preceding knowledge...exactly where I so often get it backwards. Knowledge I know how to pursue, but grace?? Can't muster it on my own. So Father, I ask that You will grant me grace, and firm and ever-increasing belief in Your promises.

If I am growing in grace and knowledge of Jesus, I will also grow in love to Him. I want to make it my goal each day to love fall more deeply in love with the Lord (wise advice from my dear friend Margaret Ashmore). I will become more satisfied in Him, and He will be more glorified in me, both now and forever.

Father, this year, let me grow in grace, and in the knowledge of my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To You be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.