New Beginning

A New Year’s Reflection

/ Dennis Griffith / Leave a comment

New Year’s is an opportunity for renewal. It is a time when even the calendar reminds us that God is making all things new; that the old passes away and the new is brought forth.  It is a time of renewal.  If we think about it and act upon it, New Year’s Eve & New Year’s Day can be like our contemporary Rosh Hashana. (Leviticus 23.23-25; Numbers 29.1-6)

But renewal is rooted in faith, not in resolutions. Resolutions are made for New Year’s and forgotten on an average of thirteen days later, according to the surveys. Faith is the result of a response to Christ.  I know I cannot make myself new or make you new.  But Christ will make a new me and a new you, as we remind ourselves of who he is, what he has done, and what he has promised.   (2 Corinthians 5.17; Revelation 21.5)

10 Questions for the New Year

/ Dennis Griffith / 1 Comment

Donald Whitney has a knack for asking pertinent probing questions.  His questions could be used for getting to know one another in a new small group.  But I think they might best be used for personal reflection.  Whitney’s questions penetrate into the recesses of our hearts. And if we take the time to reflect upon them and answer honestly, they reveal to us our own motives and deep desires – sometimes, perhaps, even in ways we may not have previously been conscious.

As we embark in the New Year take some time to contemplate these 10 questions:

  1. What’s one thing you could do this year to increase your enjoyment of God?
  2. What’s the most humanly impossible thing you will ask God to do this year?
  3. What’s the single most important thing you could do to improve the quality of your family life this year?
  4. In which spiritual discipline do you most want to make progress this year, and what will you do about it?
  5. What is the single biggest time-waster in your life, and what will you do about it this year?
  6. What is the most helpful new way you could strengthen your church?
  7. For whose salvation will you pray most fervently this year?
  8. What’s the most important way you will, by God’s grace, try to make this year different from last year?
  9. What one thing could you do to improve your prayer life this year?
  10. What single thing that you plan to do this year will matter most in ten years? In eternity?

Signs of Living to Please God

/ Dennis Griffith / Leave a comment

In Galatians 1:10, the Apostle Paul asks a semi-rhetorical question: “Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God?”   

 At this time of the year most of us see the opportunity for a new start. Whether you are one who makes New Year’s Resolutions or not, there seems to be a sense of a“Do Over” that comes almost as soon as that ball drops in Times Square, and the Bowl season begins to make way for the roundball & puck.   

The Apostle’s question raises another, more fundamental question: Who is it that we are to live to please?  

I want that to be a question that will be given consideration for this new year (… and every year).  

It would not be appropriate to suppose Paul suggests affirmation from the people around us is a bad thing. On many occasions Paul expressed his thankfulness for having been well received, for the friendships he enjoyed with many among whom he had lived and labored.  Yet his question should remind us: “The primary purpose of man is to glorify and enjoy God”. (Westminster Shorter Catechism, Q. 1)

While earning esteem at work, in your neighborhood, or among family members may often be a good thing, Paul reminds us that it is when this is our driving motivation that we may be out of accord with the very purpose for which we are created, and for which we are redeemed.   

So how do we know when we are falling into this? (Yes, when, not if.)   

The great English Puritan, Richard Baxter, provides us with some thoughts, and exhorts us: “See therefore that you live for God’s approval as that which you chiefly seek, and as that will suffice you.”

You may discover yourself by these signs: 

  1. You will be careful to understand the Scripture, to know what pleases and displeases God
  2. You will be more careful in the doing of every task, to fit it to the pleasure of God rather than men.
  3. You will look to your hearts, and not only to your actions; to your goals, and thoughts, and the inward manner and degree.
  4. You will look to secret duties as well as public, and to that which men do not see as well as those which they see.
  5. You will revere your conscience, paying close attention to it, and not slighting it; when it tells you of God’s displeasure, it will disquiet you; when it tells you of His approval, it will comfort you.
  6. Your pleasing men will be charitable for their good, and pious (holy) in order to please God, not proud and ambitious for your honor among men, nor impious against the pleasing of God.

Baxter Goes on to say:

Whether men are pleased or displeased, how they judge you or what they call you, will seem a small matter to you, as their own interests, in comparison to God’s judgment. You don’t live for them. You can bear their displeasure, and comments, if God is pleased.