I John 3:2
Let me tell you about Dolores. Her family members always had to tread on eggshells around her. Actually, they were probably nervous about doing that lest she complain about the waste of good eggs.
Occasionally, someone would confront Dolores regarding her volatile temper and her negative attitude. She’d respond, “That’s just the way I am.”
Most of us would see Dolores as serving a kind of life sentence locking her into a condition that continually caused her to hurt those she should have loved the most.
I mention her because it was Dolores who told me that New Year’s Day is nothing special. It was just like any other day. (I think she was complaining that some people had the day off.) If only Dolores had seen the New Year as an opportunity to become better.
For all the jokes about New Year’s resolutions, I think most of these resolutions express a wish to become better.
It’s a tragedy to never be able to harbor the hope of being better. When you and I have no hope of breaking free from those behaviors that cause hurt to other or ourselves, no hope of escaping those qualities that continually make us self-disappointed, we lose any sense that life will ever be different. We may even begin to wonder if we should march into some church, find the pastor, and say, “I’m returning this gospel. It didn’t perform the way you said it would.”
Is it realistic to cling to the hope of a better you? I hope so. As I look at the Bible, I find some materials that speak to the question. Some of what I’m about to say won’t be new, some might surprise you. I’m going to cluster what I say around two headings.
Should you resolve to be better keep in mind that….
A Better You Involves Letting God Do Some Things That God is Best At Doing.
[Before I move ahead, I want to be clear that what I am about to say assumes that at some time you have recognized the need for Christ in your life. You have raised the white flag, admitted you’ve rebelled against God, and humbly invited him to do whatever is necessary to transform you from an enemy to a friend or from an indifferent observer to a committed participant in God’s Kingdom.]
1. As you resolve to be a better you, listen especially to God’s correctives.
I admit I was a little concerned about how to express this thought. You see as you move through this life, you’ll meet a lot of people who would like to tweak you just a bit. Not all of them speak for God or even have your best interest in mind. Now, this doesn’t mean if someone suggests you should quit smoking or lose weight and their counsel isn’t accompanied by rumbling thunder, you can afford to ignore it. It means you should carefully consider what people are saying to you.
One place to hear God’s voice is the Bible. Of course, even there you need to be on guard against approaching the Bible with preconceived notions. That can interfere with what God is saying. At the same time, you have to bring some interpretive principles to the Bible. You don’t have to go to seminary to learn these. Most of them are rules you would apply to any kind of material.
That means you’ll try to determine a statement’s context. You’ll ask about its intended audience and the author’s purpose. You’ll ask if it’s to be taken literally or figuratively. You’ll interpret it in light of the entire Bible.
Shortly after my father’s conversion, someone gave him some books that claimed to present a biblical way of living. In particular, they taught that he couldn’t eat certain foods if he wanted to be a Christian. Only after a long talk with his pastor did he learn that these books were wrong.
Once you’ve taken these precautions, you’ll discover that the Bible has plenty to say about us becoming a better people. You’ll discover, as Paul says, that “Every part of Scripture is God-breathed and useful one way or another—showing us truth, exposing our rebellion, correcting our mistakes, training us to live God’s way.”
Let me go on to say that you may hear God’s corrective voice through other believers. Usually, this will be a believer who knows you and cares for you, a believer whose own life is balanced. He or she won’t be perfect—none of us are—but will have an attitude which says, “You and I are on this pilgrim road together; here’s something I’ve learned.”
Your hope for a better you, stands on the fact that God will give you directions along that road.
2. As you resolve to be a better you, open yourself to God’s transforming grace.
None of the members of the Corinthian church had been raised in Sunday school. They had come from the worst backgrounds. Then they were encountered by God’s transforming grace. Paul helps them recall their past and their debt to that grace.
9 Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, 10 nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
They had touched the moral bottom but God had changed them. Though they were by no means all they should have been, Paul could call them “saints.” As one translation puts it, they were “Christians cleaned up by Jesus and set apart for a God-filled life.” Paul would rejoice that “There’s no end to what has happened in you—it’s beyond speech, beyond knowledge. 6The evidence of Christ has been clearly verified in your lives.”
All that, was because of God’s transforming power that had worked in their lives and would continue to work in their lives. He could promise them, “God himself is right alongside to keep you steady and on track until things are all wrapped up by Jesus. 9God, who got you started in this spiritual adventure, shares with us the life of his Son and our Master Jesus. He will never give up on you. Never forget that.”
Your hope for a better you, stands on the fact that the God of grace “will never give up on you.”
3. As you resolve to be a better you, keep in mind God’s goal for you.
The older writers used to speak of the believer’s “glorification.” They meant that the time would come when every believer would be like Christ. John puts it this way, “But we know that when Christ comes again, we will be like him.” As you and I well know, this doesn’t happen the you step out of those waters of baptism.
Paul might call the Corinthians saints, but he knew it would be a long time before they were truly saintly. God works through various means to bring us to that place where there’s no doubt we are Christ’s people.
Your hope for a new you, stands on the fact that God has a glorious goal for you.
Should you resolve to be better keep in mind that….
A Better You Involves Doing Some Things Only You Can Do.
Praying “God change me” is fully appropriate if we wish to become better. Yet, there seems to be some matters God leaves in our hands, to a degree, at least.
1. As you resolve to be a better you, guard your attitudes.
So many of us cherish negative attitudes, attitudes that tie us down, that keep us from change. We may have faced tough times in the past and those experiences shape us for the rest of our lives. My mother taught me that a person should always expect the worst. That way, when the worst happens you won’t be disappointed. It things turn out better than you expected, that’s fine but don’t expect that to happen very often. Needless to say, she had little joy in life. I don’t deny she had her share of grief. She had lived through the Great Depression. She had lost loved ones. But how different her life would have been if she had taken different attitudes toward her experiences. In fact, others how had tough times did emerge with very different attitudes.
Victor Frankl was a Jewish psychiatrist who was imprisoned in the Nazi death camps. While he was in one camp, his family was in another. His family died. Somehow he survived. Frankl, who eventually became a Christian, reflected on his experiences and wrote several influential books. Listen to one of his key observations.
We who lived in the concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number; but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of his freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.
William James, who died in 1910, spent years studying religious people. He said, “People can alter their lives by altering their attitudes.”
Some of us need to change attitudes of worry. Jesus once asked, “Which of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life?” No one can. In fact, chronic worry may even shorten our lives. Jesus’ antidote was to order our priorities toward strengthening our relationship with God.
Some of us need to change attitudes of bitterness. I’ve known many people who harbor some deep-seated anger. This bitterness shapes their attitude toward others, toward change, toward every experience. John Homer Miller, a writer in the eighteenth century, saw the danger in this. He wrote, “Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens. Circumstances and situations do color life, but you have been given the mind to choose what the color shall be.”
Rebecca Manley Pippert, a more contemporary writer, understood how bitter attitudes need to be kept under control if they aren’t going to spoil our lives. “God . . . gives me the freedom,” Pippert says, “to acknowledge my negative attitudes before him but not the freedom to act them out because they are as destructive for me as they are for the other person.”
One step toward a better you, is a changed attitude. I’m not calling you to a warmed over plate of positive thinking, but I am calling you to try to see things just a little differently. Before I move on, I’ll leave you with one more bit of wisdom from the past. It’s bit of doggerel from McLandburgh Wilson.
’Twixt the optimist and the pessimist
The difference is droll;
The optimist sees the doughnut
But the pessimist sees the hole.
2. As you resolve to be a better you, feed your mind.
Toward the end of his life, perhaps only a short while before his execution, Paul wrote a couple letters to Timothy. In the second letter, he urged his friend to come to Rome to visit him. Anticipating that visit, Paul asked Timothy to do him a favor. Maybe you’ve asked a similar favor from a friend. Paul wrote, “When I was in Troas, I left my coat there with Carpus. So when you come, bring it to me, along with my books, particularly the ones written on parchment.”
In the midst of a tough time, Paul wanted to study. We don’t know what books Paul had in mind. They might have included some of the Old Testament, but not necessarily. Paul had a curiosity beyond the narrow range of religion. He quoted non-Jewish writers at least twice in his sermons and letters. And evidently he kept that curiosity throughout his life.
It’s said that fewer than half of Americans read a book during the year. Now, I know that there are other ways to learn besides reading books and, of course, given the new electronic gadgets available today, you can read books without reading books. But even if that statistic is too pessimistic, there are still too many of us who stop learning at some point in our lives. For some it may be when they graduate from college. For some it may be when they retire.
Why is it so important to nurture the mind, to keep it active? To begin with learning makes life more interesting. Some of the dullest people you’ll ever meet are those who have just stopped learning. Then, too, learning enhances our usefulness to the Kingdom. We have greater resources available to us to advance the gospel. Harry Blamires has been a lifelong advocate of Christians learning to love God with the mind. He reminds us that, “The Christian thinker challenges current prejudices . . . disturbs the complacent . . . obstructs the busy pragmatists . . . questions the very foundations of all about him and . . . is a nuisance.”
So, if you want to become a better you, put your mind to work. Learn things. This may be the finest time for carrying out that task. You can stream lectures over your phone or attend classes online. Most communities have libraries available; some are better than others but they are a starting place. And don’t read just those authors that agree with you. Stretch your mind.
Feeding our minds may help us discover what is essential to our faith and what is really incidental. It may strengthen our faith and give us vital information to answer the questions of those standing on the threshold of faith. It may help us bolster the faith of those who have been browbeaten by the critics. Because of my interest in history I have been especially interested in the number of new books answering the criticisms of the church’s role in history.
A word of warning: Feeding our minds may, indeed, challenge our prejudices. We may discover that what we thought we knew about some people or some places, just isn’t true.
Feed your mind if you resolve to become a better you.
3. As you resolve to be a better you, hang out with the right kind of people.
Proverbs 27:17sets this principle in imaginative language. Using he imagery of a file shaping a piece of metal, the proverb says, “As iron sharpens iron, so people can improve each other.” Puritan preacher Jeremy Taylor wrote, “The wise man chooses friends with the qualities he lacks.”
Being around the right people can challenge us to be better, can renew our enthusiasm, can enrich our understanding. Of course, hanging out with the wrong people can leave us deflated and discouraged.
The writer of Hebrews understood the importance of Christian fellowship in making us better. He told those who would neglect that fellowship, “ And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another….” The right kind of Christian fellowship can make you a better person.
As a pastor, I love it when people gather on Sunday to worship and hear preaching. But sometimes I wonder if that’s all the writer of Hebrews had in mind. It is enough to really “sharpen” us?
Sharpening probably only happens when you participate in some kind of small group activity and not just the “big church.” Whenever you get together with your fellow Christian, with an inter to focus on more than eating, there is the potential of going away a better person.
4. As you resolve to be a better you, make yourself available to others.
I once heard someone described in words something like this, “Sally lived in a world bounded on the north, south, east, and west by Sally.” My generation is notorious for being self-centered. Many of us desperately need to get outside of our narrow worlds.
Jesus said to his followers, “You are light, you are salt. Keep your light under a bucket and it does nothing. Keep your salt in the shaker and it makes no difference.”
Making yourself available to others to help them, encourage them, get them through a tough time, does them good—and does you good.
At the rise of making you feel old, let me remind you that several years ago, our church sent some of our youth off on some mission trips to Indian reservations, impoverished mining town, and a racially divided community. They’ll tell you that giving time to help paint a rundown house, teach an unruly child of poverty, or befriend a down and outer changed them and the other young people they worked with. Those youngsters are now responsible adults who are touching lives in many ways. Ask them and they’ll tell you how those experiences made an impression on them.
I saw it happen in the life of a man named Ray. Ray was a good man but he had spent his life in one tiny community and one small church. He lived in a house about fifty yards from where he was born over half a century before. His only time out of that community was a trip to Europe in the 1940s. He came back from that with a bullet wound received in the Ardennes forest during the Battle of the Bulge so his perspective on the outside world was a little jaundiced. He thought the way to do church was the way the church he had grown up in did it. Then, Ray was inspired to spend a couple weeks on a partnership mission.
During those weeks he did ministry for the first time with a Christian who wasn’t a Baptist. He discovered that three songs and a sermon wasn’t the only way worship could be done. He found that God’s Kingdom was like a diamond with many facets. He came back changed.
If you resolve to be a better you, don’t’ plan on it happening by staying alone.
Conclusion
A Christian once testified: “I am not what I should be, I am not what I am going to be, but thank God, I am not what I was.”
If we understand our own hearts, this testimony will resonate with us. You know you’re not what you should be. You may even accept the promise that you are not what you are going to be.
But finally, you can take comfort if you can truly say, you are not what you were. If you are better now than you were, that reality continues to inspire the hope of a better you.
