New Year's Resolutions

We often make resolutions at the start of a New Year. We might resolve to START doing something good that we have always wanted to do. We might resolve to STOP a bad habit that we have struggled with for a long time. The point of New Year’s resolutions is to improve ourselves in the New Year so we are better than we were in the old one.

While our intentions for these resolutions are good, most of us eventually fail to keep most of them. One researcher said that the average person keeps the majority of their resolutions for only 21 days. But they only keep one or two resolutions all year. However, the one or two they keep become permanent changes in their lives.

Resolutions give us the opportunity to let old things pass away and new things enter into our lives. The Apostle Paul talks about this in 2 Corinthians 5:17-19:

Therefore if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; old things have passed away, and look, new things have come.  Now everything is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed the message of reconciliation to us.

This passage has a lot to say to us about how we can become better in the coming year. Let’s look at each verse.

Verse 17 - Therefore if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; old things have passed away, and look, new things have come.

When Christians make New Year’s resolutions they have an advantage over their non-believing friends because Christ helps us change into a new creation. Actually, in a theological sense, Christians have already been made new. The sins and mistakes and dumb things we did in the past have already been washed away by the blood of Christ. Though theologically Christians may already be new in Christ, from a practical perspective, we still have a lot of growing and changing to do in order to be new. It is important to realize that when an “old thing” goes away it creates a vacuum in our lives. A new thing must fill that vacuum or else the old thing will just come right back. We must learn to replace the negative aspects of our lives with positive things.

Verse 18 - Now everything is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.

This verse says everything is from God. In the context of this passage, it means everything new that replaces the old is from God. The idea is that Christians are guaranteed God’s help in overcoming our difficulties and becoming new. We have the Holy Spirit to help us make and keep our resolutions. But we must pray and ask God for wisdom and strength. When we pray, we can know that God will hear and respond. God has promised that every Christian has access to Him through prayer (Romans 5:2). God always answers our prayers, though sometimes not the way we expected. God also often responds to the prayers of non-Christians because He is a God of grace and mercy, He is not obligated to do so. If we want to be better people this year than we were last year, we should spend some time praying and asking God what good things we should be doing to replace the negative things we have done in the past. If we pray and ask God for guidance, we should be prepared to listen and respond when He answers. We must also remember that God has already answered our most important prayer, which was for our own salvation. Because of that, we are now reconciled with God. Reconcile means to reunite those who are estranged. It means to remove the enmity between them and change from a position of hostility to a relationship of friendship. Before we became Christians, we lived in opposition to God, living our lives however we wanted to with no regard for God’s plans. We were not in a position of friendship with God and often worked against His plans for our lives. But once we became Christians, things began to change in our lives. Our perspectives and our priorities changed. The way we spent our time, our energy and our resources all changed. Once we became friends of God, we began to work with Him instead of against Him.

Perhaps one of the greatest things that changed in our lives was that God gave us a ministry of reconciliation. That means that God calls us to help others become friends of God as well. Just as someone told us how we could become the friends of God, we should tell others. Along with all the other resolutions Christians make, we should resolve to share our faith regularly with others. Due to differences in our personalities and life situations, we may all do this in different ways, but we should all be sharing Jesus in some way as part of our New Year’s resolutions.

Verse 19 - that is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed the message of reconciliation to us.

Notice that as God is working to reconcile the world to Himself, He does not pay attention to the sins of those He is trying to reach. We may be tempted to only share with people who we think are good enough for the Gospel. But that is not what God does. God does not put us on a scale and then decide who is worth reaching. He reaches out with grace and mercy to all who believe. The most sinful among us can be reconciled to God if we turn to Him in faith. Maybe last year was a bad year for our relationship with God, but this new year can be our best year yet. But we must not take God’s grace and mercy for granted. One day all of our chances will be used up and we will stand before God and give an account. At that moment we will either pass into heaven or be cast into hell and our chance to make resolutions about change will have passed. But at this moment, we still have time to ask God to forgive us and resolve ourselves to follow Him. Will we request that forgiveness? Will we be resolved to follow Him? Those who are not Christians should resolve that this will be the year of their salvation. Those who are Christians should resolve to share the Gospel in the new year with anyone who will listen.

Conclusion:

Most people make New Year’s resolutions. Christians have the promise from the Lord for help in fulfilling our resolutions. To increase the success rate of our resolutions we must replace our old habits with new habits that will please God. One resolution we should add to our list is to witness more to those who are lost because God has given each of us the ministry of reconciliation.

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Terry Dorsett has been a church planter and author in New England for more than 20 years. He is a happy husband, a proud father and adoring grandfather. He is a cancer survivor and believes that God works powerfully through times of suffering. Find all of his books at:

http://www.amazon.com/Dr.-Terry-W.-Dorsett/e/B00405U4NY

My Prayer for 2017

My devotions this morning were from Luke 5. Verses 1-11 remind us of the time Jesus was teaching on the seashore and so many people came to hear Him they were literally pressing in around Him. He had to get into a nearby boat and push out a little from shore and teach from the water. Imagine having so many people come to hear the preaching that that the crowd was literally pressing into the preacher!

After completing His sermon, Jesus told the disciples to let down their fishing nets. It was the wrong time of day to fish. And some scholars say they broke with tradition by fishing from the wrong side of the boat. But they obeyed Jesus and caught so many fish they had to summon their friends to bring other boats out to help them collect all the fish. That is a lot of fish!

My prayer for 2017 is that pastors will preach the Word so powerfully that the numbers of people who come will overwhelm their worship space and those pastors will call pastors from other churches to help them take some of the people so they can all be discipled well.

Our God is able, are we willing......

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Dr. Terry W. Dorsett has been a pastor, church planter, denominational leader and author in New England for more than 20 years. He is a happy husband, a proud father and adoring grandfather. He is a cancer survivor and believes that God works powerfully through times of suffering. He writes extensively and you can find all of his books at:

http://www.amazon.com/Dr.-Terry-W.-Dorsett/e/B00405U4NY

Thoughts About Christmas

As Christmas fast approaches I've been talking to some of my friends about what Christmas means to them. I found their responses interesting and (with their permission) have posted them below. Enjoy! And feel free to add your own thoughts in the comment section below.

My friend Donna is thinking about how Eve and Adam introduced sin into the world by falling for the serpent's tricks. Generations later, through another woman, the Virgin Mary, God's Son was born to redeem mankind from sin. Donna thinks that comparing and contrasting Eve's and Mary's experiences would make an interesting sermon.

A fellow pastor likes to ask people at Christmas time "How's Your Easter Spirit?" He is trying to get people to consider the fact that Jesus was born at Christmas so that He could die and rise from the dead at Easter.

A teenage boy I know just thinks about eating lots of great food. What else would teenage boys think about at Christmas?

My friend Donald has been thinking a lot about the Holy Spirit during the Christmas season. He has been through some tough times in his life and the holidays can be difficult for him. But as he relies on the Holy Spirit, he finds the strength to keep going.

One of the worship leaders at a nearby church is struggling to maintain a true Christmas spirit while shopping for gifts. Somehow the spirit of giving and the “greed” that is so prevalent in our materialistic culture just do not go together in his mind. I share his struggle and hope that we never get comfortable with the commercialism that Christmas has become.

My friend Brian wants to know the best way to communicate to others. He wonders “Why keep trying to communicate with people who do not seem interested in listening?” As millions of families gather for various Christmas celebrations, knowing what to say when will become very important!

My friend Kathy is thinking about all her favorite Christmas songs. There are many songs that we only sing around Christmas time and they are powerful reminders of how God came to earth to save sinners. He came with angels, stars, shepherds, mooing cattle and eventually an entourage of wise men. Maybe we should start singing Christmas music all year long?

My friend Don wonders why God decided to come to earth in the form of His created likeness. After all, He’s God. He could have taken any form. But He chose to become a man. Perhaps so we could relate to Him better?

Finally, my friend Roy ponders not just the reason Christ came, but what He willingly endured as a member of humanity for us. That is perhaps the most mind-numbing concept to consider on this entire list. Christ came to save sinners. Though salvation may be free to those who receive it, it cost Christ a great deal. Physical pain from the crucifixion itself was more than most of us could bear. But Christ also endured emotional pain as He was betrayed by one of His own and then abandoned by those who only hours earlier had boasted that they would die for Him if needed. But the most terrible thing Christ had to endure for us was our sin. When He who knew no sin became sin for us, that was the most awful experience anyone could ever have. But Christ endured the shame of the cross so that we might taste the glory of heaven. Perhaps that might be the most important concept for all of us to consider that as we celebrate Christmas this year.

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Dr. Terry W. Dorsett has been a pastor, church planter, denominational leader and author in New England for more than 20 years. He is a happy husband, a proud father and adoring grandfather. He is a cancer survivor and believes that God works powerfully through times of suffering. He writes extensively and you can find all of his books at:

http://www.amazon.com/Dr.-Terry-W.-Dorsett/e/B00405U4NY

Why is Preaching Harder Than It Used to Be?

The ability to preach a meaningful sermon has always been important for a minister. Many pastors feel that preaching great sermons has gotten harder than it used to be. While there may be many reasons why preaching has gotten harder, technology is driving many of those shifts in preaching.

1.Technology makes preaching harder because it allows us to listen to excellent preachers from around the world.

In the past we mostly only heard sermons from our local minister. Perhaps once or twice a year a guest speaker might come through and lead a series of meetings. Perhaps once or twice a year the pastor would allow a young “preacher boy” to fill the pulpit. But for the most part, we only heard sermons from our local pastor. Since that was what we were used to, we accepted whatever his style of preaching was as the “normal” or “right” way of preaching. But now technology allows us to listen to excellent preachers from all over the world. We can listen to them on podcasts, watch them on TV or live stream them on the Internet. This allows us to watch the best orators from all around the world. While this can be helpful to our spiritual walk, it can also make us more critical of our local pastor than we should be. Local pastors are feeling pressure to preach like all the celebrity pastors. But for many, that is an unrealistic pressure. There are only so many David Platts, Andy Stanleys and John Pipers in the world. Expecting our local pastor to preach like them is unfair. It puts far more strain on him than it did on previous generations of preachers. Though we should enjoy all the great preaching that technology allows us access to, we should strive to prepare our hearts to receive something from the sermon in our local church no matter the oratory skills of our local minister.

2. Technology makes preaching harder because it allows us to fact check sermons instantaneously.

Though pastors should strive to be as accurate as possible in their sermon preparation, no one is perfect. Every pastor will eventually misquote a statistic, refer to the incorrect tense of a Greek or Hebrew word, or get the details of some illustration from popular culture wrong. In the past, we might have thought something the preacher said was a bit off, but with no way to verify it until later, we normally let it slide. If we did remember to check the details later and learned the pastor was slightly off, we often still benefited from everything else he said in the sermon regardless of some minor mistake he may have made. Today our smart phones allow us to instantly fact check pastors’ sermons. And if we find that he has messed up some minor detail, we often become so focused on that small error that we are unable to hear the rest of what he is saying. Our immediate use of technology often leads to us discounting the truth of the rest of the sermon over a minor point that really is non-essential to what he was trying to say. This is unfair to the minister. Imagine if a room full of people were fact checking everything you or I said in real time? That is a lot of pressure to put on a minister, or anyone else for that matter. That does not mean that pastors should be sloppy in their research, but it does mean that congregations should not hold them up to some standard that is impossible for anyone to achieve. Let’s refrain from using our smart phones to fact check the pastor during the sermon so that we do not miss the point of what he is trying to say in the rest of the sermon.

3. Technology makes preaching harder because it gives pastors access to other people’s sermons.

At first glance, this might sound like an advantage. And indeed, when done correctly, listening to, or researching, someone else’s sermons can be a helpful part of sermon preparation. However, it also increases the temptation for a pastor to just preach a sermon someone else created. Seldom does that work as well as a sermon that a pastor has embedded deep in his spirit through prayerful mediation and study. Conscientious pastors may use someone else’s sermon for ideas, outlines and research but will not try to pass those sermons off as their own. They may incorporate some portion of someone else’s sermon and give credit where credit is due, but the heart of their sermons will be of their own making. But technology allows pastors who are less than conscientious pretend to be more prepared than they are. Most people see through the ruse and the result is that even when the content is great, the credibility of the pastor is in question, thereby producing a sermon with less impact than it should. When we suspect that our pastor is using someone else’s sermons, we should pray for the Holy Spirit to reveal to our pastor the dangers of that approach. We might also ask our pastor for a copy of his notes from time to time, not in an effort to catch him doing wrong, but in an effort to enhance our own learning experience. By doing that we also help our pastor remain accountable for having notes that came from his own study and were not just downloaded from some website.

4. Technology makes preaching harder because we have become a very visual culture.

As a culture, we have gotten used to graphics, videos, and other digital media to help us learn. Many pastors lack the skills, or the time, to incorporate these technological items into sermons on a regular basis. This is especially true for bivocational pastors, who have very limited preparation time. While it is hoped that pastors will try to learn these skills and squeeze the time in, the reality is that many pastors will not be able to take advantage of all the technologies available for the visual presentation of their content. We should train our hearts and minds to focus on the content of what our pastor is saying instead of judging him for his lack of graphic design abilities.

Technology is changing how we communicate, including how sermons are prepared and preached. Some of those changes are great. Others are not as helpful. We must commit ourselves to making the best use of technology and avoiding the pitfalls of it.

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Dr. Terry W. Dorsett has been a pastor, church planter, denominational leader and author in New England for more than 20 years. He is a happy husband, a proud father and adoring grandfather. He is a cancer survivor and believes that God works powerfully through times of suffering. He writes extensively and you can find all of his books at:

http://www.amazon.com/Dr.-Terry-W.-Dorsett/e/B00405U4NY

The Life Changing Gospel

I was 11 the first time I truly understood the gospel. It filled me with hope for the future. It was a hope that lifted my eyes off of the momentary troubles in my life and changed my perspective. It changed my perspective about my family, my community and my church. For me, the gospel was truly good news.

The gospel began to bear fruit almost immediately in my life. By the time I was 14 I knew I wanted to be in ministry. I preached my first sermon in the 8^th grade and somehow covered the entire book of Revelation in less than 10 minutes. I look back on that first sermon with a humorous smile realizing that I’ve never understood that book as clearly as I thought I did that day! Those early days of my faith were a joyous time of learning, growing and discovering what the gospel could do in my life.

Do you remember the joy you felt when the truth of the gospel first came to you? Do you remember how it changed you? Do you remember the wonder and amazement you had when you learned something new in the Word or through prayer? Since you received the gospel, have you born fruit in keeping with the gospel that now dwells in you? Have we genuinely deepened in our faith or merely become pious?

Titus 3:3-4 reminds us that “we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared” he saved us. That salvation was life altering, not only for us, but for those around us who were also impacted by our understanding of the gospel. The gospel changes people and it is a change worth experiencing.

Yet billions of people around the world have yet to hear the truth of the gospel. Millions right here in America only know a cultural gospel that is really no gospel at all. Those of us who are born again Christians can be part of changing that reality. We can rise up as a people of God and put aside our racial differences, our political differences, our stylistic differences and share the gospel with those around us. We can pray, give and volunteer through our churches, through the organizations like the Baptist Convention of New England, Samaritan's Purse, the Salvation Army and the SBC International Mission Board. In doing so, we can help those who have yet to hear the gospel for the first time experience the same mercy and grace that we did when we first believed. Are we willing to do it?

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Dr. Terry W. Dorsett has been a pastor, church planter, denominational leader and author in New England for more than 20 years. He is a happy husband, a proud father and adoring grandfather. He is a cancer survivor and believes that God works powerfully through times of suffering. He writes extensively and you can find all of his books at:

 http://www.amazon.com/Dr.-Terry-W.-Dorsett/e/B00405U4NY

Black Friday Commitment - Guest Post by Phil Wilkes

Here is something I want Christians to think about. Last weekend millions of people collected all the sales flyers and mapped out the stores they wanted to go to on Black Friday. They thought strategically about what order they would go to those stores. They may have clipped some coupons and then downloaded other coupons on their phones. They stood in line for hours, showing up before the store even opened.  Once the doors opened they pushed and shoved their way through to get what they wanted. Many charged what they purchased on credit cards and will be paying for it well into 2017 or beyond. All this preparing for the sales, standing outside in cold weather for hours, buying things most could not afford was all for the sole purpose of accumulating material possessions that for the most part will be broken, forgotten or replaced in a matter of weeks or months. None it it will last a lifetime and none of it will impact eternity.   

What would happen if Christians displayed that same fervency as we prepared for church each week?  What if we prayed for the service all week? We could use the weekly prayer guide or the previous week's bulletin to pray for people and their requests. What if we went to bed early so we could get a good nights sleep so we could get up early and spend time praying for the the service? What if we determined the weather would never be an obstacle to our attending worship? What if we joyfully brought our tithe to church to support God's work? Imagine what church would be like!

Imagine. Dream. Pray. Talk about it with others. Then determine to make it happen! We control our level of commitment to the Lord. Surely we can be as committed to Him and His church as we are to Black Friday shopping.

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Rev. Phil Wilkes is the pastor of New Colony Baptist Church, Billerica, MA, and a member of the Board of Directors for the Baptist Convention of New England.