STOP AND THINK – If I need to change or improve my behavior (and who doesn’t) I shouldn’t need the artificial date of January 1 to inspire me to action. (Alan Terwilleger, former Colson Center president)
New Years’ resolutions are usually simple confessions that we haven’t been or done all we could have in the past year, and that we’d like to do better this year. As Terwilleger suggests, however, the change of the calendar is not sufficient motivation to improve. It will take an act of our will—in fact, a daily choice to work at doing what we know we should to improve.
Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose. (Philippians 2:12-13)