We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.

Making Resolutions? Consider This!

Rob-holding-manifesto-poster-square

So, this is the time of year when we all look back at the year that is passing and look ahead to the new year in front of us. If you’re considering a New Year’s resolution, we wanted to make a tiny suggestion for your consideration.

Greg has been fleshing out the ReKnew Manifesto in his recent series, and it occurred to us that although the manifesto is made up of ideas and things that we hold to be true and important, they are completely worthless unless they are lived out. Just as Jesus is described as the Word made flesh (John 1:14), we are all invited to give flesh to the reality of God and his Kingdom. We are calling for a peace-filled revolution that will draw people to Jesus.

So here’s the suggestion we hope you’ll consider:

Read through the manifesto, and notice what stands out to you. Is there something that calls to your heart and stirs up passion in you? As you notice this, consider what it would look like to begin to give this idea some flesh. What does this idea ask of you? Invite the Holy Spirit to inspire you and give you wisdom. Then make a short resolution based on your time in prayer and reflection. Tell others about it. Get support. Keep moving forward even when you forget about it and seem to be failing. Take little baby steps. Use your imagination to see and hear and feel yourself living out what the Holy Spirit has inspired in you.

If you decide to participate in this exercise we’d love to hear from you. You can contact us at editor@reknew2015.wpengine.com. Who knows what might come from even just a few of us agreeing together to make this revolution more than just a bunch of words.

Lord bless you, and let’s together commit to making 2014 a year in which we partner with God to bring about his will “on earth as it is in heaven.”

Related Reading

Quotes to Chew On: Conflicting Depictions of God

“This is something like the way I believe we should respond when we encounter biblical narratives that depict God doing things we can’t imagine Christ doing. For example, I can’t for a moment imagine Jesus—the one who made refusing violence and loving enemies a condition for being considered a child of God—commanding anyone to mercilessly…

On Attending to the Light in Darkness

Joe Spurr via Compfight Donald Miller has posted a reflection on his Storyline blog about highlighting goodness and thereby pointing to Jesus in the aftermath of events such as the bombing in Boston this week. We want to emphatically declare together that “an enemy has done this” (Matt 13:28). But we also want to be a people…

Sermon: Diaper Power

In this short clip from Greg Boyd’s Sermon Diaper Power, he introduces the theme of the sermon where talks about how the poverty of the manger exemplified the power of God. In this sermon, Greg shows that God really is like the baby swaddled in clothes in the manger. The kind of power that God…

The Bible Is Insufficient

 Patrick Feller via Compfight Kurt Johnson wrote a piece a few days ago on the proper place of Scripture in the life of a believer. He reflects on the fact that we have elevated the Bible to a place that God really never intended. We are a people centered on a person, not a book.…

Why Bart Ehrman Doesn’t Have to Ruin Your Christmas (Or Your Faith) Part 2

This is the second of several videos Greg put together to refute Bart Ehrman’s claims published in the article What Do We Really Know About Jesus? If you missed it, you can catch the first installment here.

Crucifixion of the Warrior God Update

Well, I’m happy to announce that Crucifixion of the Warrior God is now available for pre-order on Amazon! Like many of you, I found that the clearer I got about the non-violent, self-sacrificial, enemy-embracing love of God revealed in Christ, the more disturbed I became over those portraits of God in the Old Testament that…