A New Goal for the New Year

Life and Books and Everything

Clearly Reformed

Books, Religion & Spirituality, Arts, Christianity

4.6 • 635 Ratings

🗓️ 4 January 2023

⏱️ 6 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

There are many worthwhile battles to fight in life. The most important, most necessary, and most dangerous is the war we must wage against sin, flesh, and the devil.

A new year means new opportunities to grow as Christians. This article written for WORLD Opinions, encourages believers to focus on spiritual development this new year instead of fighting battles outside of themselves.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Greetings and Salutations. This is Life and Books and Everything. I'm Kevin DeYoung.
0:15.0	Happy New Year. This is my latest article at World Opinions, fitting, I think, for this week, entitled A New Goal for the New Year.
0:29.5	I understand the criticism of new goals for the new year.
0:33.5	They never stick.
0:34.5	They are legalistic.
0:35.5	They rely on willpower.
0:37.2	I get it. There are dangers with New Year's resolutions like there are dangers with everything.
0:42.7	But I like the fresh start of the New Year. I like the opportunity to establish better habits.
0:47.2	And I like that resolutions concentrate my head and heart on the one person I have most control over in my life and on the one person
0:56.0	who causes me the most problems. Me. Like most people, I spend a fair amount of time reading
1:02.5	things online, and what I see there can be ugly. People are often mean, nasty, proud,
1:08.5	braggadocious, petty, spiteful, defensive, sarcastic, and angry.
1:13.4	The internet has lots of people like that, simply because the world has lots of people like
1:17.3	that. And if we're honest, sometimes we are like that. It is easy to get fired up by grand plans
1:24.7	to change the world, or to take back the country from the libs,
1:28.6	or to overthrow the patriarchy, or to denounce the misdeeds of famous Christians,
1:32.6	or to tear down the evil cabal known as white evangelicalism.
1:38.0	We can labor long to exercise dominion in the world, while at the same time doing little,
1:41.9	to exercise mastery over ourselves, our sins,
1:46.0	and our worst impulses. Several weeks ago, I stumbled upon an old video of John Piper
1:52.1	warning what seemed to be a group of pastors or students about our culture's addiction to
1:57.2	television. A clip looked to be 20 years old or more.
	...

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