An Article from Pastor Paul Boutan
This is the time of year where many of us make resolutions to quit our bad habits, lose weight or get out of debt. A recent study says that “one out of three New Year’s Resolutions made on January 1st will be broken by January 31st.” In fact, according to Forbes Magazine three out of every five people who buy gym memberships for New Year’s will stop going to the gym within twenty four weeks. Well, thankfully becoming a “New You” is not dependent upon your commitment to keep a resolution, rather it’s determined by God’s commitment to keep His promises.
Listen to this promise that God made to His people in Ezekiel 36:26, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” Why is He promising to give a new heart? Well, because there’s something wrong with the one we were born with. In Jeremiah 17:9 it says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it” According to the Scripture, we were all born with diseased hearts. The disease each of us have genetically inherited is SIN. You might say we are S-I-N positive. Hence, God through the prophet Ezekiel declares He will give us a “New Heart” and “put a new spirit within you.” As Charles Spurgeon had once aptly pointed out, “Notice God doesn’t promise to IMPROVE our nature. He doesn’t promise to simply mend our broken hearts. No, He promises a NEW HEART and a new spirit”
So as we welcome in the New Year and you’re tempted to make a new promise to God, stop and remember the promise He made to you. When you received Jesus into your life as your personal Lord and Savior, He gave you a “New Heart” and “put a new spirit within you” and as a result you are a new man or a new woman even as it says in 2Cor 5:17, “Therefore,. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.”