TLP 234: It’s Time to Revisit Those Resolutions

Truth.Love.Parent.

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Sometimes the success or failure of our goals can reveal the guiding motivation. A spiritual -sounding resolution tastes sweet, but if the behavior doesn't follow, the heart may not have been truly cultivated in devotion to God.

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Welcome to Truth. Love. Parents. Where we use God's Word to become intentional, premeditated parents.

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Here's your host, A .M. Brewster. If you're wondering, yes, I am not feeling well.

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But I promise to get through this episode in the most intelligible way possible, and you can promise to overlook my extra raspy voice.

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Deal? Awesome. Okay, whether you make New Year's resolutions and commitments, or you set goals and build habits, or you just don't really do anything at all,

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I believe this episode will be beneficial just for everyone because it speaks to a deep human need.

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Therefore, it's something we all desperately need. But it's also obviously something our kids need. But before we do that, if you've been listening to this show for any period of time and have been blessed at all by it, will you invest a little time in rating, reviewing, and or recommending

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Truth. Love. Parent? It's a huge help and blessing as we try to connect God's Word to growing families.

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I'd also like to thank Dave for making today's episode possible. I love how God doesn't just magically put money into any of our bank accounts.

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He uses His people to build His church, edify the body, and bear one another's burdens. But that doesn't make it any less supernatural or divine.

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That's just how God has chosen to work through His people. And it's eternally wise and glorious that He accomplishes one work of equipping

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His saints physically while simultaneously equipping His saints spiritually. Dave and everyone else who has ever sent a gift to TLP is being used by God to get this content into the minds of thousands and thousands of families all over the world.

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So, thank you very much. Okay, so why is today's topic so incredibly important?

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Well, I've dealt with topics like this before. In episode 16, we talked about planning for a successful family.

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In episode 119, we discussed how your family's future is tied to the past. And in episode 223, we covered how your family can make resolutions that glorify

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God. But let me clarify why we seem to put so much emphasis on New Year's resolutions here at TLP.

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Number one, Christians are commanded to grow, bear fruit, change, and be transformed.

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Number two, if we're not intentional about that, we'll stifle that growth. Three, if we're not premeditated about that, we won't grow as bountifully as we could.

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And four, since the American culture is already predisposed to embracing change in the New Year, we kind of piggyback off of that.

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But the truth is that it doesn't matter what time of year it is. We should always be intentionally and premeditatedly growing in our sanctification.

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And it doesn't matter what you call it. It can be a resolution, a goal, a vow. I don't really care. If we put it into TLP jargon, though, we might say, do you have an intentional premeditated plan for personal and family conformity to the image of Christ?

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Well, if you do, whether it be January or August, you will also need a plan to continue pursuing that goal.

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No one makes a significant decision and masters it the same week. No one engages in spiritual warfare and never struggles in that area again.

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So the content of today's discussion is about what to do after a decision has been made and it's just kind of been hanging out there for a while.

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Many times decisions are forgotten or they fizzle out when we or our kids see how much work it's going to take.

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But sometimes we simply set ourselves up for failure by making the wrong kinds of commitments. So let's take this time to scan the scenic vista and talk about how we can help our kids be successful in their spiritual growth.

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Number one, first things first, despite how noble our intentions or well -meaning our motivations, if we found that ours or our children's resolve has started to slip, it may be valuable to consider the following.

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A. Sometimes we fail keeping our commitments because we overestimated our own ability to desire what's right.

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In episode 137, we asked, how do we teach our children to love the right things?

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It takes as much to teach our children to love the right as it does to train them to continue loving the right.

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And you know you, our frail, sinful humanity is wont to stumble.

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We must keep in mind that we and our kids are prone to wander. This means that we often have to re -resolve our resolutions and re -commit to our commitments.

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But as we've often said on this show, real change is always going to start in the mind, in the spirit.

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As we learned in The Mirror's Christianity, behavior grows from desire, which grows from belief.

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And belief is a function of the heart. Therefore, if our family isn't moving forward in their growth as they should, we should plan to re -evaluate the heart.

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Letter B. Of course, there's always the possibility that your initial resolutions weren't really about God so much as they were about you.

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Sometimes the success or failure of our goals can reveal the guiding motivation. A spiritual -sounding resolution tastes sweet to the rocky and thorny -hearted people, but the soil will choke out or dry out the behavior over time under the worst circumstances because the soil wasn't truly cultivated in a devotion to God.

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Now, if you're uncertain what I mean about the rocky or thorny -hearted people, I strongly encourage you to check out the 4 Children series starting in episode 55.

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Any goals made without God at the foundation are designed for failure, and we may need to reconsider that.

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Letter C. Another reason we often slip in our goals is that we try to do it on our own.

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I hope you were involved in helping your children plan for new growth and change this year. Therefore, I would hope you'd continue to help them achieve their goals.

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However, too often, we parents are so happy that our children resolved to do a good thing that we deluded ourselves into thinking that's all it takes.

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Sometimes we realize that a resolution is not a guaranteed thing, but we're just too lazy to really do the intentional, premeditated work of helping our kids truly be successful.

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And sometimes we're just so fixated on our own struggles and failures that we're blind to theirs. Either way, just like you need a parenting community, your kids need a family that will bear their burdens, keep them accountable, and set benchmarks and walk beside them.

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If you and or your children have slipped in your commitments, you may be trying to do it by yourself.

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Letter D. Another reason we fail to live up to our commitments is that we allow our failures to define us.

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None of us will perfectly do anything consistently, and Satan, the world, and our flesh love to flaunt our failures in our faces.

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We must not allow our inferiority or guilt to turn into inadvertent arrogance. Our justification was not accomplished in our power, and we should not be so foolish to believe that our sanctification is accomplished solely in our power either.

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It's true that our failures are our faults, but we're not limited by our sin. We're only limited by the grace and power of God, something that is infinitely unlimited.

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Our failures should therefore cause us to confess and repent, not collapse and recant as we arrogantly think that this whole thing is on us.

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By the way, today's episode notes are available at TruthLoveParent .com on our blog, Taking Back the

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Family, so you can check those out later. So number one, those are some reasons we may already be slipping in our resolve, or they're reasons that we will struggle later this year.

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Even just a few days out of our How Do You Become series, you may have encountered some hurdles that have let the air out of your sails.

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Come back to these truths when it happens to try to identify why you've run aground. And this is actually very valuable because we can learn important truths about ourselves when we falter and fail.

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So number two, turn your failed resolutions into a learning experience. A. Help your kids see that they aren't strong enough on their own.

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We can't hope to truly change outside of the daily sustaining grace of God. B. Use this to illustrate how desperately wicked their natural hearts are.

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We are so often intoxicated by the very things we know will destroy us. C. Guide them to an understanding of the fact that too often our goals are motivated by our design for the future instead of God's.

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Help them refocus on the purpose for their change. D. Allow these slips to show them how discontent we can become when doing

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God's will. Just like we need to see how our hearts crave sin, we also need to acknowledge that we often don't like righteousness.

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And E. Obviously use these times of failure to remind everyone in your home that we all desperately need

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Christ. He is our rhyme, our reason, and our only resource. Now let's finish up with our third point.

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Number three, here are some suggestions as to how you and the rest of your family can fulfill your commitments regardless of whether you're still going strong or potentially have begun to waver.

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A. Acknowledge that, generally speaking, change will come slowly. Do I believe that God can upend and revolutionize our lives overnight?

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Definitely. But history has taught us that humans fight spiritual growth. It's due to the war raging in our very cells.

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B. As I mentioned earlier, we also need to reorient our beliefs. It's our philosophy of life that dictates our desires, which cause our behavior to blossom or canker.

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We will only stay faithful to God's working in our lives if we constantly keep our minds focused on Him.

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C. We also need to stay realistic. We know that God has high biblical expectations.

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He should, and so should we. But, as you've likely heard, how do you eat an elephant?

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Well, you only do it one bite at a time. Help your children have a logical and biblically accurate view of change.

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As Patch the Pirate says, little by little, inch by inch. By the yard, it's hard. By the inch, it's a cinch.

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D. Another application point from our observations today is that we need each other. You need your kids to become who

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God wants you to be, and your kids need you to become who God wants them to be. The plethora of one another is all throughout the

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Gospels are proof of that fact. And lastly, E. Trust in God's power, not your own.

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We started with the observation that our justification didn't happen in our own power, and our sanctification won't either.

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Yes, we need to cooperate with the Holy Spirit. We're not marionettes, but it's a mystery how in the moment we submit,

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God provides the power to do so. We're responsible to act, but He's responsible for our ability to act.

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It's a beautiful spiritual paradox that makes all the sense in the universe to God, though it may be confusing to us.

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And we and our children are blessed to be allowed to participate in it. I greatly appreciated your patience with this last series.

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It had many parts and many of the episodes were long, so today we got right to the point. Again, the episode notes are available to you so that you can use them to help your family succeed, and I would encourage you to share this episode so other families may do the same.

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And in our next episode, I look forward to discussing some 2019 parenting trends for which we need to be diligently watching.

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I hope you know that we desperately love you and your families. We may never have met, but we desperately want

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God's best for you and yours. Please feel free to send us your struggles and share your stories. We'd love to get to know you better.

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So, as we strive to become newer and more Christ -honoring versions of ourselves this year, I'll see you next time.