An Indispensable New Year Resolution

Do people know more about your political perspective than your spiritual perspective? In other words, do your friends, family, and co-workers know more about your opinions regarding vaccine mandates, masks, inflation, illegal immigration, election integrity, America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, or our president’s mental health than they know about your opinions regarding God and His expectations for how we ought to live? This New Year, let us resolve to make our views about God better known than our views about politics.

Granted, our political perspective is often a practical outworking of the way we answer how God expects us to live in community, but are we truly taking the time to make sure others understand that our political perspectives are rooted in spiritual truths rather than political philosophy? Likewise, do we find ourselves talking more about what government ought to do or what God’s people ought to do? More importantly, do we convey to others the impression that the solution for our nation’s troubles ultimately rests with the government or with God? Perhaps we have greater room for improvement in this resolution than we’d like to admit.

Here are a few steps to help us implement this New Year resolution:

• Spend more time reading and studying the Bible that reading and watching the news (this includes talk radio)
• Ask the Lord for a heart that is more concerned about God’s reputation and status in the world than that of our nation
• Before complaining about a political issue, take it to the Lord in prayer to ask what His heart on the matter may be
• Ask others whether God may be attempting to accomplish something through our political difficulties
• Focus on whether our nation is accomplishing its ultimate purpose of drawing the hearts of people back to God (Acts 17:24–27)

As we begin a new year, let us resolve to make our spiritual perspective better known and understood than our political perspective. If there is one New Year resolution that we prioritize as indispensable, let it be this one. May God give us the strength of will to persist in this goal all year long!