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So that’s a wrap. 2023 is over and 2024 has started. We’re already two weeks in. Christmas has been packed away for another 11 months, and we eagerly look forward to the next holiday – Australia Day, Easter, Anzac Day, etc. 

Some may have sat down on New Year’s Eve and made that list of new year resolutions, others may have given up on that sort of thing. After all, resolutions are tricky things. We usually note down all the things we want to change, all those bad habits. “I resolve this year to give up all chocolate.”; “I resolve this year to do more exercising.”; “I resolve to lose weight.”; etc. Really quite ho-hum, because they look incredibly like the ones I wrote down last year … and the year before that. I get tired just thinking about it all.

An autobiography was written by a friend of my father’s and it’s title was “Good enough is never good enough”. So how does that sit with all those NY resolutions I’ve just set myself – again? Even if I succeed in staying on the ‘straight and narrow’ it isn’t going to be good enough. But good enough for who? (or should that be ‘whom’? Maybe I need to add another resolution to my list, to get better at English grammar). Am I trying to do these things, change these bad habits, for my own enjoyment or sense of satisfaction? Am I trying to prove that I can do it, to make me feel good? Who am I trying to impress??

So I decide to not eat chocolate. It doesn’t really matter because I know I’ll ‘cheat’. I’ll sneak a piece here and there and say it doesn’t matter because no-one else knows. Well, yes of course, I know! But after all, this is all about me anyway. No, wait a minute, that doesn’t really make any sense. If I can’t even do this one small thing, why bother? Why do I try to be better? 

Kevin Watson says, “Our efforts to change are not enough and can never secure God’s approval. But the good news is that God already loves us. God already offers us forgiveness.” Is this what those resolutions are all about? Am I trying to make myself more loveable? My good can never be good enough – not for God. Even my best isn’t as ‘best’ as it can be. I know I will fail, and fail again, but still I will try. And still God will love me.

If I give up trying to be better, then I feel I have let God down. It’s nice to know that He loves me anyway, but I still need to seek after that which may not be attainable – “Christian perfection”. The Wesleyan doctrine holds that being ‘good’ or becoming something even more: i.e., ‘perfect’ is  God’s grace at work in us, freeing us from sin and temptation, and enabling a positive response from us. But surely I’m not good enough yet to believe that God’s grace includes me.

I believe there is no “good enough”; there is only God and God’s love for me – a very imperfect sinner. And so I will continue to try. I think I need to sit down and reconsider the chocolate. I think I can strive for something more real than that.

Yes, I’ll keep trying. I will continue to pray for forgiveness and continue to ask the Holy Spirit to give me strength to get back up each time I fail. And I will ask God to hold my hand, because I certainly can’t do it by myself.

In the words of Paul, as he wrote in Philippians, chapter 3:

^“12 I do not claim that I have already succeeded or have already become perfect. I keep striving to win the prize for which Christ Jesus has already won me to himself. ¹³ Of course, my friends, I really do not think that I have already won it; the one thing I do, however, is to forget what is behind me and do my best to reach what is ahead. ¹⁴ So I run straight toward the goal in order to win the prize, which is God’s call through Christ Jesus to the life above.”

God’s blessings to you.