Make a Bible Resolution This Week

This week brings a new year, and some of us will make resolutions of varying degrees of seriousness. I want to exhort you to make a clear, realistic, enjoyable resolution this week related to the Bible.

Whether you’re making a Bible resolution, or any resolution as a Christian, I’d point you to 2 Thessalonians 1:11-12 where Paul prays for us, that 

God may make you worthy of his calling 

and may fulfill every resolve for good 

and every work of faith by his power,

so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, 

and you in him, 

according to the grace of our God 

and the Lord Jesus Christ.

May God fulfill your every resolve for good. The word resolve is not some thin wish or passing whim. It refers to a deep and settled desire. It’s the same word Scripture uses for God’s “good pleasure” or God’s “purpose.” It’s steady, deep-seated, settled, firm. If you make a resolution this week, go with something like that: steady, deep, settled.

Let 2 Thessalonians 1:11-12 be your guide: Identify a holy, settled God-given desire — something that will better your God-given calling(s); pursue it through faith, in God’s power, not your own — that is, leaning on his grace for help; and pray that in and through it, Jesus’s name would be glorified. How might it clarify and sanctify a new year’s resolution to pray for what would glorify the name of Jesus?

And my particular exhortation this morning is that you make a Bible resolution. Not necessarily for a year; maybe just January, or January through March. Make a plan, or refresh your plan, for how you’ll daily seek God himself through his living word by his living Spirit in the Bible in the coming weeks. What time? Where? What sequence of passages? For how long each day? 

Whatever your resolution, get alone for a few minutes between now and Thursday with 2 Thessalonians 1:11-12 and pray about it and make a clear, realistic, enjoyable plan. Perhaps God might be pleased to make 2026 the most nourishing, most illumining, most thrilling year yet of your life in God’s word.

Let’s pray.

Prayer of Confession

Father in heaven, we are your creatures, and we are your redeemed, and oh how we need you — and need to hear from you in your word. You made us for yourself, and made us for your word. And we stand here on the brink of a new year which brings so many possibilities: how might we know you this year like never before, and enjoy you like never before, and flourish in taking in your word daily and enjoy you in it and draw daily strength of soul from you. 

Yet, Father, if we’re honest, a new year can also be frightening. In what ways will we stumble and miss the mark? How will we sin against you? What trivialities will distract us from real human life? How will our flesh and our hearts fail? We turn to future possibilities to assuage our conscience about our past failures. We talk about desiring you, but the way we treat your word betrays our weakness.

And so we come before you this morning, on the cusp of a new year, as men and women desperate for your grace and your help. We confess our failures to cherish and feed on your word, and acknowledge our other failings and sins in the quiet of this moment.