New Year’s Day brings with it some interesting traditions.

People in Romania wear bear costumes and dance around. In Scotland, they make balls from wire and paper, light them on fire, and swing them while walking through the streets. In Italy, people throw pots, pans, and old furniture from their windows as the clock strikes midnight.

In Turkey, they wear red underwear to bring luck to their loved ones. In Latin America, people wear red underwear if they’re looking for love, and green underwear if they’re seeking wealth. I wonder what you wear if you’re looking for both.

One of the most ancient New Year’s customs has to do with resolutions. Babylonians apparently began this tradition four thousand years ago; they vowed to return borrowed farm equipment. If I have borrowed your tractor, I promise to return it this year.

Statistic Brain Research Institute has compiled some interesting facts regarding New Year’s Resolutions:

•  45 percent of Americans usually make New Year’s resolutions
  •    Only 8 percent are successful in achieving them
  •    However, 49 percent have at least infrequent success
  •    Only 24 percent never succeed in fulfilling their resolution each year.

Here’s a fact I found particularly interesting: People who explicitly make resolutions are ten times more likely to attain their goals than people who don’t explicitly make resolutions.

So it’s clearly a good idea to have goals, whether they take the form of New Year’s resolutions or not. What should ours be?

According to a 2016 survey by Money magazine, the most popular New Year’s Resolutions were:

•  “Enjoy life to the fullest”
  •    “Live a healthier lifestyle”
  •    “Lose weight”
  •    “Save more, spend less”
  •    “Spend more time with family and friends”
  •    “Pay down debt.”

How many of them focus on us? How many on others? How many on God?

What New Year’s resolution does our Father want us to make?

As I prayed about that question, a passage came immediately to mind. Let’s explore it together, and see how it can guide us into God’s best plan and purpose for us in the new year.

Know God’s resolutions

On Tuesday of Holy Week, Jesus was teaching in the Temple area, where his enemies lined up to debate him. In two days Jesus will be betrayed; in three he will be crucified.

So it is that the Pharisees “gathered together” (v. 34) to plot against our Lord. Then “one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. ‘Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?’” (vv. 35-36).

Let’s understand his trick question. The Jewish authorities counted 248 positive commandments, as many as the members of the body; and 365 negative commands, one for every day of the year; for a total of 613, as many as the Hebrew letters of the Ten Commandments. Which is most important? If Jesus chooses one, he’ll be accused of denigrating the others.

Jesus turns the debate into a proclamation for the ages. Here we find God’s two resolutions for our lives. The first: “And he said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment’” (vs. 37-38).

“Love” translates agape, the unconditional commitment to place the other person first. It is not a feeling, but a decision, a lifestyle. In this case, it is choosing to honor God in all you do, to put him first in every dimension of your life.

In Jewish theology, your “heart” is the will, your practical dimension. Your “soul” is your intuitive dimension. Your “mind” is your rational dimension. These are the three ways we know everything we know: practical, intuitive, and rational. We use a cell phone practically, since most of us don’t understand the technology rationally. We like people intuitively; we do math rationally.

Jesus tells us to love God with “all” your heart, soul, and mind. Put him first with your decisions, your attitudes, and your thoughts. There is to be no part of your life that is not his, no part where you do not value him first, seek relationship with him first, please him first.

Imagine a world where everyone sought to please God with every thought, decision, and attitude. That’s God intention for our culture today.

The second resolution: “And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commands depend all the Law and the Prophets” (vs. 39-40). We are to agape our neighbor, the next person we meet, as much as we do ourselves. What does this mean?

We have an instinct for self-preservation; we must seek the preservation and good of that person as we do for ourselves. We tend to excuse our own mistakes—after all, we know what we meant to say, or do. We must do the same for others. We think first about how this will affect us—we must think first how this will affect our neighbor. This is not a suggestion, but a command.

It is human nature to judge ourselves by our intentions, but others by our actions. When we love our neighbor as ourselves, we give them the same benefit of the doubt that we give ourselves. We extend to them the same forgiveness, the same understanding, the same compassion we extend to ourselves.

Imagine a world where everyone loved their neighbor as themselves. That’s God’s intention for our culture today.

When we put God first, we position ourselves to receive all that his grace intends to give. He can lead us in his “good, pleasing and perfect will” (Romans 12:2). He can bless us, use us, redeem our lives, and make our present obedience count for all eternity.

When we put neighbor first, we position ourselves to bless others as God has blessed us. We become conduits of the Holy Spirit in the world. We lead others to Christ, because they see Christ in us. We become change agents in a fallen culture desperate to see God’s love in ours. We become salt and light, and our lives change the lives we touch.

Live by God’s resolutions

Here’s the problem: You and I are fallen people. The only person who has ever lived perfectly by God’s life resolutions is the one who taught them to us. So what do we do?

Four simple steps are vital.

One: Resolve to put God and neighbor first in all you do.

To love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength is to put him first in every area of your life. Ask before every word or action, will this honor Jesus? Will it help my neighbor? Make this your New Year’s Resolution, your lifestyle commitment.

Two: Begin the day in God’s word.

You need God’s word to fulfill God’s will. J. I. Packer was right: the Bible is “God preaching.” Hebrews 4: “The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (v. 12).

God will speak to you through his word, if you will listen. So set aside time at the beginning of every day to meet him in his word. Get a good study Bible: I recommend the ESV Study Bible or the NIV Study Bible. Get a notebook so you can record what you hear from Scripture. Make a plan for Bible reading, whether you read through the Bible in a year, or a chapter a day, or whatever seems best to you.

As you read, ask the Spirit who inspired Scripture to speak from it to you. Define your challenges or questions for the day, and ask God to answer them from his word. Make time for God’s word, and God’s word will change your life.

Three: Walk through the day in his presence.

When you face challenges, pray about them. When you have decisions to make, pray about them. When God blesses you, thank him.

Then make specific times through the day to be with him. The psalmist prayed “evening and morning and at noon” (Psalm 55:17). From then to today, the Jews have typically set aside three times a day for prayer and worship. We should do the same.

Four: End the day with him.

Take a moment to look back over your day. Thank God for all that was good. Ask his forgiveness for any sins you recognize. Commit yourself to him for the evening and the day to come. Begin and end the day with your Father, and he will bless all you surrender to him.

Conclusion

It’s often said that today is the first day of the rest of your life. That’s obviously true. But this day could be formative for the rest of our lives, if we choose today to live by God’s New Year resolutions. If we choose to put God and neighbor first in all we do. We could be catalysts for a spiritual awakening in our lives and through the lives we touch, where we live and around the world.

Jonathan Edwards began every day with these two commitments: “Resolution One: I will live for God. Resolution Two: If no one else does, I will.” And God made him the greatest theologian in American history and used him to spark the First Great Awakening.

William Barclay once wrote, “A man will never become outstandingly good at anything unless that thing is his ruling passion. There must be something of which he can say, ‘For me to live is this.’” And God made his biblical commentaries the most popular in the English language.

I was once speaking at a university in Kentucky and made time to visit Abraham Lincoln’s birthplace near Hodgenville. There’s a plaque at that location that records the following conversation:

“Any news down t’ the village, Ezry?”

“Well, Squire McLains’s gone t’ Washington t’ see Madison swore in, and ol’ Spellman tells me this Bonaparte fella has captured most o’ Spain. What’s new out here, neighbor?”

“Nuthin’, nuthin’ a’tall, ‘cept fer a new baby born t’ Tom Lincoln’s. Nothin’ ever happens out here.”

How will God view the importance of this moment in eternity?

Denison Forum

President Donald Trump said Sunday that he and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky were “getting a lot closer, maybe very close” to an agreement to end the war in Ukraine. Both leaders reported progress on security guarantees for Ukraine and the division of eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region that Russia has tried to capture. Mr. Trump said it will be clear “in a few weeks” whether negotiations to end the war will succeed.

The president meets today with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss next steps in Gaza. Mr. Netanyahu is also expected to focus on Israeli allegations that Iran is rapidly working to rebuild its ballistic missile arsenal.

On Saturday, Iran’s president claimed that his country is in an all-out war with the West. On Sunday, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un oversaw the launch of long-range strategic cruise missiles. Earlier today, China launched its most extensive war games around Taiwan as the country expands its nuclear warhead manufacturing capacity.

If you’re like many people, however, you’d rather not have to think about global war and peace this morning.

Today begins what some are calling “Twixmas,” “Dead Week,” or “Feral Week”—the stretch between Christmas and New Year’s Eve when, as one journalist reports, “We get the urge to take off and tune out, and our outstanding projects, deadlines, and other responsibilities become 2026 You’s problem.”

An Atlantic article calls this the “best week of the year,” explaining that “for many of us, this is the only time of year when it feels possible, and even encouraged, to do nothing.” Others are not so positive. One person said of this week, “What day it is doesn’t matter. Existence is confusion. Time is a flat circle.” Another wrote, “It’s just debris and crumbs and wishing the relatives would vaporize.”

Still another posted that this week “feels like one long Sunday.” I agree wholeheartedly, but not for the reasons they mean.

Losing the “melody” of life

When we lose the meaning of Christmas, we misplace the meaning of life. When the entry of Christ into the world becomes just another holiday rather than the day that changed human history, we lose what Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan calls the “melody” of life.

When Christmas is over, Christmas trees go to the curb or back in the attic. However, their original purpose was more transcendent than decorative: beginning in the seventh century, their triangular shape was used to describe the Holy Trinity and employed at Christmas as the “Tree of Christ.”

Christmas wreaths also go back into storage. However, the first modern Advent wreath also possessed abiding significance: it was used to symbolize the eternal nature of God and eternal life in Christ. Its prickly leaves and red berries represented Jesus’ crown of thorns and the drops of blood at his crucifixion.

Nativity sets go back into their boxes as well. However, when St. Francis of Assisi created the first crèche in 1223, he employed a living nativity scene, demonstrating the living reality and significance of Jesus’ birth.

“All for love’s sake became poor”

What if that birth had never happened? According to St. Augustine,

You would have suffered eternal death, had he not been born in time. Never would you have been freed from sinful flesh, had he not taken on himself the likeness of sinful flesh. You would have suffered everlasting unhappiness, had it not been for this mercy. You would never have returned to life, had he not shared your death. You would have been lost if he had not hastened to your aid. You would have perished, had he not come.

The greatest theologian since Paul was right. Paul said of Jesus, “He himself is our peace” (Ephesians 2:14), because “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself” (2 Corinthians 5:19). He did this when “he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (v. 21; cf. Colossians 2:13–14).

Now when we confess our sins to him, “he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9, my emphasis). Our Father then “blots out your transgressions” (Isaiah 43:25), removes them “as far as the east is from the west” (Psalm 103:12), casts them “into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:19), and “will remember [your] sin no more” (Jeremiah 31:34).

Our sins barred us from the “tree of life” (Genesis 3:22–24) and consigned us to spiritual and eternal death (Romans 3:23). But because Jesus “bore our sins in his body on the tree” of Calvary, we can “die to sin and live to righteousness,” knowing that “by his wounds you have been healed” (1 Peter 2:24). And one day we will dwell amidst the “tree of life” whose leaves are “for the healing of the nations” (Revelation 22:2).

All of this was made possible by Christmas. Billy Graham was therefore right to identify “the most important event in human history” as “the coming of God’s Son into the world.”

And all of this was our Savior’s gift of love, as the Anglican missionary Frank Houghton noted:

Thou who wast rich beyond all splendor,
All for love’s sake became poor;
Thrones for a manger didst surrender,
Sapphire-paved courts for stable floor.
Thou who wast rich beyond all splendor,
All for love’s sake became poor.

“Ask if this were merited”

How should we respond? St. Augustine urged us:

Let us then joyfully celebrate the coming of our salvation and redemption. Let us celebrate the festive day on which he who is the great and eternal day came from the great and endless day of eternity into our own short day of time. . . .

For what greater grace could God have made to dawn on us than to make his only Son become the son of man, so that a son of man might in his turn become a son of God?

Ask if this were merited; ask for its reason, for its justification, and see whether you will find any other answer but sheer grace.

When we embrace such grace, when we “joyfully celebrate the coming of our salvation and redemption,” every day is Sunday.

And every day is Christmas.

Quote for the day:

“Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is illusion.” —Brennan Manning

Our latest website resources:

• What are God’s New Year’s resolutions?
• 2025 recap: Most influential people, biggest stories, biggest flops, & spiritual highlights
• Do miracles still happen? A podcast interview with Lee Strobel
• A review of Lee Strobel’s “The Case for Miracles”
• What does Christmas have to do with bioethics?

Denison Forum

One of the many reasons I love the Christmas season is the buoyant spirit of kindness and cheer it always seems to inspire. Strangers wish each other “Merry Christmas” (or at least “Happy Holidays”). Children count the days and then the hours until Santa visits them. Families gather to exchange gifts and make memories. I’m always a little sad on the day after Christmas when the world seems to return to “normal” so quickly.

But return it does.

• We woke up this morning to news that the US carried out a strike against Islamic State militants in Nigeria yesterday. President Trump said the military action was in response to the terrorist group’s attacks on Christians in the region, a reminder that Christianity remains the most persecuted religion in the world.
• Heavy rains led to a “nightmare before Christmas” in Southern California with flooding and mudslides that threaten the region still today. A powerful post-Christmas storm will impact at least fifteen million people in the Northeast beginning today as well.
• A new form of flu is sweeping across the US as the highly contagious variant produces more severe symptoms than other strains, disrupting Christmas plans for many.

By now, you’re hoping I’ll pivot to reasons for hope on this day after the holiday. Let’s do just that, though not in a way most people would expect.

From Plainview to university president

Former Sen. Ben Sasse announced this week that he has been “diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer, and am gonna die.” His statement hit me hard. Not just because he is only fifty-three years old and otherwise in the prime of his life, but also because I have followed his career for years with deep gratitude.

His story is the American story writ large.

He was born in Plainview, Nebraska (population 1,275), the son of a high school teacher and football coach. He went on to graduate from Harvard, attend Oxford, then earn a master of arts at St. John’s College and at Yale a master of Arts, master of philosophy, and doctor of philosophy.

He worked for the Justice Department while teaching history at the University of Texas at Austin. In the years following, he worked for Homeland Security and HHS before he became a college president at the age of thirty-seven, won election to the US Senate four years later, and won reelection in 2020.

In 2023, he assumed the presidency of the University of Florida, stepping down last year due to his wife’s health.

“Such is the calling of the pilgrim”

I first heard Dr. Sasse speak at a healthcare event a number of years ago and was deeply impressed by the sincerity of his personal commitment to Christ and the rigor of his intellectual passion. I have read much of what he has written in the years since and consider him one of the most significant public intellectuals in America today.

News of his terminal cancer is a shocking reminder that none of us is promised another Christmas. But as Dr. Sasse wrote, Christians have a hope that transcends all else:

Not an abstract hope in fanciful human goodness; not hope in vague hallmark-sappy spirituality; not a bootstrapped hope in our own strength (what foolishness is the evaporating muscle I once prided myself in). Nope—often we lazily say “hope” when what we mean is “optimism.”

To be clear, optimism is great, and it’s absolutely necessary, but it’s insufficient. It’s not the kinda thing that holds up when you tell your daughters you’re not going to walk them down the aisle. Nor telling your mom and pops they’re gonna bury their son.

A well-lived life demands more reality—stiffer stuff. That’s why, during Advent, even while still walking in darkness, we shout our hope—often properly with a gravelly voice soldiering through tears.

Such is the calling of the pilgrim.

The first pilgrims of Christmas

There are three ways we know all that we know: practically, rationally, and intuitively. We start a car practically, do math rationally, and like people intuitively.

God reveals his wisdom and will to us in all three ways, as we’ll see today.

This week we have been discussing Christmas in the order it was revealed: to Mary, then Joseph, then the shepherds, then the Magi. We’re connecting their experiences with the promised Son who is “Prince of Peace, Everlasting Father, Mighty God, and Wonderful Counselor” (Isaiah 9:6 in reverse).

The first pilgrims to meet the Christ of Christmas were the “wise men” who came “from the east” to Jerusalem to worship him (Matthew 2:1–2). They experienced the wisdom of the Wonderful Counselor practically when a star alerted them to his birth (v. 2) and later guided them to “the place where the child was” (v. 9). They experienced his wisdom rationally in the biblical guidance shared by the chief priests and scribes (vv. 3–6). And they experienced his wisdom intuitively in a dream that warned them not to return to Herod, leading them to depart to their home country “by another way” (v. 12).

All of this culminated some two years after Jesus’ birth (cf. Matthew 2:16), showing that the Wonderful Counselor transcends Christmas. For us to experience his counsel, we need to do what the wise men did: seek and follow his guidance in all the ways he gives it, placing our hope not in our wisdom but in his.

And then, when we kneel before the Christ of Christmas one day, our pilgrimage will be over.

“We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise”

Dr. Sasse noted: “Advanced pancreatic cancer is nasty stuff; it’s a death sentence. But I already had a death sentence before last week too—we all do.”

This year’s Christmas memories will soon fade as the culture shifts to post-Christmas sales, New Year’s celebrations, and all that will follow. But our choice each day to make Christ our Wonderful Counselor, to seek and follow his will above all else, will outlive every memory of this fallen world and God’s “well done” will echo in paradise forever (Matthew 25:23).

As I often say, we cannot measure the eternal significance of present faithfulness.

In his post, Dr. Sasse quoted part of the last stanza of Amazing Grace. Here it is in full:

When we’ve been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining as the sun,
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we first begun.

And every day will be Christmas.

Quote for the day:

“If I obey Jesus Christ in the seemingly random circumstances of life, they become pinholes through which I see the face of God.” —Oswald Chambers

Our latest website resources:

• What does Christmas say about God?
• Australia attack, Rob Reiner, Christmas movies, Candace Owens & football updates
• Do miracles still happen? A podcast interview with Lee Strobel
• A review of Lee Strobel’s “The Case for Miracles”
• What does Christmas have to do with bioethics?

Denison Forum