New Years Resolution....again?

I already find it hard to believe that I am coming up on another New Year so fast. 2010 has been a historic ride in comparison to most of my 31 years of life. This was a year of firsts. The first time that I have been actively and dramatically a part of a church staff (talk about on the job training.) I was also ordained and became worship and families pastor later in the year. The middle of the year was a bungee cord of events. The Lord added a set of twins to our quiver, I lost my first job around the same time that I lost my mom to cancer. Moreover a few weeks later found out that we were expecting our sixth child. Those are just the highlights and I feel both blessed and exhausted just thinking about them.

After a year like this one, I can't help but think about what 2011 will bring. I already know that baby TBA will be here in May, but what else will God unfold and reveal to my family and I. As I meditate on this thought another thought creeps into my heart and mind. One that requires confession if I am to use it as a resolution for the New Year. So here goes...

I must confess that I have had many revelations from the Lord in the past few years and while that is a wonderful and blessed thing, I have not stewarded those revelations well. I have taken an idea or thought from the word of God and instead of allowing it to be a continuous growth in me I have instead used it as a ladder to achieve a goal, then joyfully and pridefully sat at the next plateau looking down on the revelation as an experience that I had. I had become a reformer but not one who reforms for Christ's sake as much as my own, and definitely not one who continued to reform because after all, I was tired and I had already reached the next level.

The truth is that there is not a "next level". As Christians we are automatically to be conformers to the image of Christ and reformers of everything in our lives to the standard of the word of God. I learned a new phrase over the holidays and that is "Semper Reformanda." The Marines cry "Semper Fidelis" which means "Forever Faithful." And their cry is not vain. It is truly a representation of the standard to which only a Marine will and can hold too. Semper Reformanda means "Forever Reforming." It is truth over tradition. It is not that you or I once did something but that we continue to do it. This is the wonderful and harsh and convicting reality that I was made aware of through God's grace this holiday season. My life had not been a journey of "Good to Great" but more of mediocrity to great. Semper Reformanda means that I can never achieve the final goal until I reach my home in Glory one day. Admittedly I first thought that to be an incredibly discouraging thought, but the more I meditated on it the more I realized how freeing it was.

The problem with reforming for a stopping point is two fold. First, I will always have the wrong motive. In the same way that one starts a diet in the New Year so that by March or May they can go on a vacation and absolutely stuff their face, I have taken God's revelations and used them to reform my life so that I could get to a plateau and say "I have arrived." A true diet is one that is a life change and not a fad and so it should be for the Christian. Always striving, pursuing Christ and the ways of Christ knowing that there is no end while in this planet. Secondly if someone gives me a goal to reach or a stopping point I will inevitably reach for that goal in my own power. I will not stop to think that I can't do it, because after all you have shown me the summit and I have the tools to reach it. Of course my lips will give God all the glory but that is all.

Semper Reformanda is a battle cry that says, "My work to conform myself to image of Christ and push His name into all areas of my life will never be complete. I push on so that my children and my children's children will continue the reforming work their father started through the grace and guidance of God." My hope is that when my grandchildren look back on my legacy they will see that Grandpa had just started to scratch the surface of what it looks like to walk with Jesus in an effective and infectious way.

In 2011, my resolution is the cry of Cortez when his men wanted to retreat from Aztec Indians who outnumbered them 300 to 1. "Burn the ships!" We are not going back. We will press on. And as long as Christ allows we will strive with excellence to conform to His image and to shed that image into every area of our lives. Not as just my vision but as a multi-generational vision for my family and my church.

SEMPER REFORMANDA