Habits for the New Year
January is a wonderful time to make some resolutions for the upcoming year. How do we intend to live our lives? After all, life is the most precious gift from God. What we do with it is our response to God. Some of the most popular resolutions in our culture include losing weight, being more healthy, getting organized, learning something new, and getting out of debt. Of course, most resolutions fail within the first month. We make the resolution, but often we don’t have a plan to make it happen. Likewise, as followers of Jesus, it’s not enough to simply want to be a disciple, we need a plan and a process to make that happen. Discipleship is a pattern of life. It’s the practices we cultivate in our lives as we submit to our Lord, Jesus. One of the early Church Fathers, Tertullian (c.160 – c.225) said “Christians are made, not born.” That is, it takes work. Just like Olympic athletes are made and not born, the kind of people we become is directly related to the habits we practice in...