A New Yours Resolution

Resolve to say to God today, tomorrow, Tuesday and beyond, “It’s yours.”

I’m not sure how you feel about New Year’s resolutions. Maybe you make them. Maybe you have already broken them, even though we’re negative two days into 2023. Maybe you roll your eyes at them. In whatever case, I want to challenge you to make a different kind of resolution: a new yours resolution. Here’s what I mean: resolve to say to God today, tomorrow, Tuesday and beyond, “It’s yours.” All of it is yours. Here are four truths to help you get there.

1. God is a You

When we talk about God, we are not just talking about theoretical questions. We’re talking about a God who is a personal being. He is not an impersonal it, not a power or force like in Star Wars. He is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and we speak of him as “he” and not “it.” But more than that, if he is a personal God, he is not just he but also you. To speak about God as You is to speak the language of prayer. Prayer is speaking to God and not just about God. When we talk about God, we are not just talking, thinking, speaking about a him in third person. We are talking and thinking to him in second person. You. Read the Psalms and you will find the psalmists weaving in and out of second and third person like breathing. The Psalms talk about God, but talking about God leads to talking to God. Talking to God speaks the language of prayer. It also speaks the language of confession. We confess God, in the older sense of speaking truth about God to God. So the truth of theology turns us to prayer and to faith.

2. God, You Are Sovereign

God’s sovereignty means that he is in absolute control of all things. “You created all things, and by your will they existed and were created” (Revelation 4:11). “You work all things according to the counsel of your will” (Ephesians 1:11). We pray and we confess: God, you are in heaven and you do all you please. Unlike a political operative, manuevering and negotiating, a sovereign is a king, a lord, a boss. When I say, “God is sovereign,” I’m actually using it as a shorthand way of combining several aspects of God’s character. God’s character is who he is in himself, his attributes. God’s sovereignty ties into God’s authority and power. Authority is the right to do something. Power is the ability to do it. For example, if I own our family minivan, I have the authority, the right, to lift it up over my head, because it’s mine and I own it (as long as the note is paid off!). However, I don’t have the power or the ability to do it, because I’m not strong enough. God’s sovereignty means he is able and authorized to do all that he pleases.

3. God, You Are Good

A sovereign God who is not good is a terrible and terrifying tyrant. But we say and believe with the Psalmist, “You are good and you do good” (Psalm 119:68). God’s goodness means that all that God is and all that God does always aligns with the essential character of God himself. How do you know that God is good?

• God’s goodness is seen in creation. What God has made reveals who God is: “God looked upon all that he had made and behold it was very good” (Genesis 1:31).

• God’s goodness is seen in covenant. A covenant is a binding relational commitment. God enters into covenant with his creation, and his redeemed people, displaying his goodness: “Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.” (Psalm 106:1).

• God’s goodness is seen in revelation. Revelation is what God has told us about himself, through what he has made, and what he has said in the Bible.

• God’s goodness is seen in providence. Providence relates to “provision,” referring to the way God controls all things, even human history and decisions. As Joseph tells his brothers after all the their scheming and his dreaming: “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good” (Genesis 50:20).

• God’s goodness is seen in redemption. The unique, one-and-only good God of Christianity shockingly deploys his power on behalf of the powerless. “O LORD, who is like you, delivering the poor from him who is too strong for him, the poor and needy from him who robs him?” (Psalm 35:10).

4. God, You Love Me

The sovereign and good God has deployed his power and presence to provide us the solution to our problems. How do we know he loves us? Many define the love of God as his willingness to be sort of nice or approve of our lives no matter what. This is not a true definition of love. If you’re a parent, you know that loving your kids doesn’t mean that you let them do what they want. Instead, you help provide for them what they need and what is best. This is love: seeking the best of another person, usually at a cost yourself. This is exactly how God loves us. He provides us with what is best and what we need: “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that God loved us and gave his Son as a sacrifice that turns away God’s wrath” (1 John 4:10). This is the radical nature of God’s love: “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). We were not just strangers, not just not locals, but enemies. Recognizing the love of God means recognizing our own rebelliousness and our Father’s desire to have us back. He loved you so much that he gave his eternal, only-begotten Son.

Awhile back, we took our kids to the beach, and they wanted to go in the water. So we walked down to the shoreline, took our shoes off and waded in up to halfway up our calves. That’s as far as we went, because as true Floridians we didn’t have our bathing suits and we didn’t want to get wet. We stayed on the edge of the ocean, and we stayed dry—and maybe this is the experience you have had with the ocean God’s love. With all your nice clothes on you’ve approached the vast sea of who God is and what he offers, and you’ve said, “Ok, I’ll take my shoes off, and maybe roll up my pants a little bit.” Maybe you’ve allowed yourself a little sense of the ocean around your ankles, but the rest of your body is still dry.

So maybe you need to make a new yours resolution for 2023. Maybe you need to get yourself soaked in the personally sovereign goodness of the God who is love.