New Year Resolution Traditions

A New Year’s resolution is a tradition reaching around the world and back to ancient times.  The Medieval age saw the Christmas season as a time to make vows for the coming year.  The ancient Middle East made promises to their gods beginning each New Year.  I wonder if Adam and Eve made a few New Year’s resolutions after they were denied the Garden of Eden.  Are yearly resolutions an echo or longing of when we walked with our Creator: A time of perfect union, a sin-free world and God’s perfect peace?

The Bible says that Jesus is coming again (Revelation 22:12, 13) but until that time we continue to make our resolutions each year.

The Best of All Resolutions

The best of all resolutions comes from the pen of King David.  “My soul languishes for your salvation; I wait for your word.  My eyes fail with longing for your word, while I say, ‘When will you comfort me?’ Though I have become like a wineskin in the smoke, I do not forget your statues.” (Psalm 119:81-83)

The greatest resolution a believer can make is to know God’s Word and obey God’s Word.  Our mission at Village Schools of the Bible is to teach God’s Word and transform lives because we believe that God’s Word is God’s power and God’s power is God’s Word.

Village Schools of the Bible Can Help You Keep that Resolution

On January 6, 2020 new discipleship classes begin.  We invite you to enroll in a campus near you.  Cover-to-Cover Bible Survey is a journey through God’s Word from Genesis to Revelation.  It is intense but life transforming.

Cover-to-Cover Bible Survey can be experienced online.  In the comfort of your home, you can journey through God’s Word.  Your travel guide is Pastor Warren Coe, executive director of Village Schools of the Bible.  You will be assigned a mentor that will help you along the journey through the Bible.  Go to our website for more information.  http://villageschoolsofthebible.org/classes/cover-to-cover-online

We pray that your 2020 will be a year of feasting on God’s Word.

Warren

If Dan Rather had been living in 1809

Pastor and teacher, Chuck Swindoll wonders what story Dan Rather would have reported if he was alive in 1809. Something in England?  An event or person living in America?  None of the above.  Swindoll writes, “World attention was on Napoleon whose army was sweeping across Europe.  From Trafalgar to Waterloo his name was synonym for superiority.”

Swindoll reminds us that at the time of the Corsican’s invasions and battles, babies were being born in Britain and America. “Who was interested in cribs and bottles…history was being made.  In 1809 Austria fell.”

That year William Gladstone was born and would become one of the greatest English statesman.  Alfred Tennyson came into the world in 1809.  So did Oliver Wendell Holmes in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Edgar Allan Poe in Boston. Charles Darwin and the man who would become our 16th President of the United States came into the world that fateful year of 1809.

Who cared?  Napoleon captured Austria.  Nothing else mattered.

Pastor Swindoll invites us to go back nineteen centuries.  “Who could have cared about that birth of a baby while the world was watching Rome in all her splendor?  The Mediterranean to the south. Euphrates to the east.  Atlantic to the west.  The Roman Empire was as vast as it was vicious.  The queen of all nations had arisen to reign forever.

“All eyes were on Caesar who demanded a census so as to determine a measurement to enlarge taxes. Who was interested in a couple making an eighty mile trip south from Nazareth?  What were they in light of a mighty Caesar and his edicts?  Who cared about a Jewess giving birth to a boy?

“God did! Without realizing it, mighty Augustus was only an errand boy for the fulfillment of Micah’s prediction…a pawn in the hand of Jehovah.  While Rome was busy making history, God arrived as a baby.  Rome is but a yawn in the memory of human history but Jesus changed the world.”

Galatians 4:4 says, “But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law.”  On the first Christmas Day God entered the world as a baby.  Born not in a palace or mansion but a stable.  His destiny was not to defeat Caesar but sin.  At the cross and empty tomb He gained the victory for the sake of sinful man.

May the miracle of the first Christmas fill your heart with joy. Merry Christmas!