HERE WE GO AGAIN

Starting Over and Over and Over

Nancy Gaughan

    Most people make New Year’s resolutions. Usually they involve a physical change. We promise ourselves we will lose weight, exercise more, clean out our closets and keep them that way, smile more, listen more, get organized, an on and on. For many of us, we also make spiritual resolutions like, “I resolve to pray (read the Bible, attend Bible studies and church regularly) more.”  What resolutions have you made over and over that you don’t keep?

    A good question is why to we fail at changing what we know should be changed?  Such changes aren’t quick and easy, like closing a door.  Whether we are determined that next year we will smile more or clean out our closets or read the Bible more, it requires time and attention and practice.  None of the changes are one time things.  They all involve change in behavior.  They require practice until the new behavior is a permanent change.

    No one like to practice.  My husband’s favorite musical is “My Fair Lady”.  In it a flower girl in London, Eliza Doolittle, goes to a speech professor to learn to speak “proper” English, without her cockney accent.  Professor Higgins drives her in her practice relentlessly until she all but breaks.  She sings a song imagining when she is proper and prim that she has the ability to do him in. But she sticks with it and is eventually mistaken for a Hungarian princess.

    My son, Will, is gifted in many ways.  He can do just about anything he sets his will to do.  We like to say, “Where there’s a Will there’s a way.”  He loves music.  I used to play the piano. One of my New Years resolutions is to practice and play more. Naturally I urged him to learn to play.  No one just sits down and plays the piano who hasn’t practiced for years. He wouldn’t take the time. He was not willing to make the commitment. It was the same with Hebrew.  Since he’s grown up, he’s found the value of such things and, on his own, he’s learned to play the guitar and  read koine Greek.

    Most of us are more like Will as a child than as Eliza.  We start and get frustrated.  We get discouraged at the failures and think that it’s a waste of time and energy. 

    The biggest part of the problems is that we have unrealistic expectations. We expect our behavior to change and change completely overnight, or in a week or at most a month.  We get frustrated.  We are not alone in our frustration that we stumble sometimes in our efforts and give up.  God gets frustrated with us too. As He told us through Jeremiah, JER 7:13 While you were doing all these things, declares the Lord, I spoke to you again and again, but you did not listen; I called you, but you did not answer.

    How often has God called to you that you did not answer?  He whispers, “Don’t put it down, put it away.”, “Don’t eat that candy.” “Do it now, before you get distracted.” “Stop and listen.  It’s my ministry for you.”

     JER 11:6 The Lord said to me, "Proclaim all these words in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem: `Listen to the terms of this covenant and follow them. 7 From the time I brought your forefathers up from Egypt until today, I warned them again and again, saying, "Obey me." 8 But they did not listen or pay attention; instead, they followed the stubbornness of their evil hearts.

    The stubbornness of our evil hearts:  “I don’t feel like calling her now.”,  “I need that cookie, candy.  It’s only one piece, at a time.”,  “I’m too busy to pray, read the Bible, meditate on His word.”, “I can do it tomorrow.” “It’s not that important.” Etc.  Ask yourself why you fail at what you know you should do.  What do you tell yourself and how do you react to your own need to start over and over?

    What we need is a new perspective.  Not, “Not again.”, But “Great! I get another chance to do it right.”  We have to be like Eliza. I had to learn a new computer language when I got my MBA.  At 2 o’clock in the morning I would say, “Just one more run and it will work.”

    As we walked to the bus stop one day when Will was in middle school, he got a far away look and said, “It’s like people agree that God created everything, but they act like they think when He finished He retired or  went off to go fishing or play golf or something.  They don’t realize every day is a new creation.” God never stops creating, never stops forgiving, never stops renewing.  He gives us a new start every time we turn to Him in humility and ask for His help. He has promised.

     ISA 40:30 Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; 40:31 but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength.  They shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

    We are hopeless and helpless when we try to change ourselves, try to do it alone without the Lord.  We will all be like Paul when wrote in Romans 7:15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. Yet, he goes on to write in verse 26, that the Spirit helps us in our weakness.

    The parting challenge is for each of us, in whatever our resolutions are, to turn to Him, to ask the Holy Spirit to help and guide us in keeping them. And for when we fall short, to sing  this little song from the show, “Swing Time”

Nothing's impossible I have found,

For when my chin is on the ground,

I pick myself up,

Dust myself off,

Start All over again.

Don't lose your confidence if you slip,

Be grateful for a pleasant trip,

And pick yourself up,

Dust yourself off,

Start all over again.

Work like a soul inspired,

Till the battle of the day is won.

You may be sick and tired,

But you'll be a man, my son!

Will you remember the famous men,

Who had to fall to rise again?

So take a deep breath,

Pick yourself up,

Dust yourself off,

Start all over again.