How many of us struggle to write meaningful New Year’s resolutions and KEEP them? I think it’s a safe bet to say we have all faced those struggles. This year was no different for me. I couldn’t figure out what I wanted my resolution to be. Then the Lord spoke to me very clearly as I was reading a book: “RECKON YOURSELF DEAD TO SIN.” I looked up the verse (Romans 6:11) in the New Living Translation, where it says, “So you should also consider yourselves to be dead to the power of sin.” The book I was reading went on to illustrate the point, and it’s all about perspective.
The author said that to see a refrigerator pray and struggle to become a refrigerator would seem like foolishness to us; it already IS a refrigerator. But we sometimes do the same thing. Instead of searching the Scriptures to discover who God says we are and then live as such, we try to figure it out on our own and end up asking God to make us who we already are.
I began to apply that principle to the verse the Lord spoke to me. The Scriptures plainly show that we have already died with Christ on the cross, so we have already died to sin (Romans 6:1-7). We don’t have to ask to die to sin, for it is already a fact as soon as we believe in Jesus as our Savior. In truth, we just have to change our point of view to agree with God that we ARE dead to sin already. When sin knocks at the door, we can say, “Sorry, nobody’s home!”
So my New Year’s resolution is this: to see myself the way God sees me…to change my perspective to His eternal perspective…to walk as the person He has made me to be. Doing this informs every aspect of my life: how I pray, the effort I put into my job, how I act toward others, what I think about, how I react to adversity, the things I watch on television, the music I listen to, how I spend my money, my self-talk, what I do with my time, and the list goes on and on. My perspective, when in alignment with God’s perspective, is the foundation of my life here on earth. Every moment. Every aspect.
PRAYER: Father, there are so many things Your Word says I already am. I ask You to show me how to be the saint You have already made me and unleash Your power in me to walk in the truth of that.
~ Cathy Schrock, writer and photographer
