5 Tips for Making New Year’s Resolutions

I mentioned in yesterday’s post that if you feel like you ought to make a resolution this year, then that probably means you need to make a resolution.

But the word resolution is overused and not as heavy as a word I am going to propose in its stead for this post. This year, I plan on making a few New Year’s commitments. But how do you decide if it’s worth it?

You know what I mean… you resolve to lose three pounds a month and it’s December before you even realize you gave up on that back in March. But this year, let’s make deeper commitments than just meager weight loss and less video game time. Let’s examine a structure for how we can set commitments for 2013 and actually keep them.

1. Start Now

If there’s something you know you ought to change, we’ve less than a week before New Years; start today. Get a head start and prove to yourself that you can indeed make this change in your life. Don’t wait till New Years Eve. If you plan on drinking less, start now and persevere through December 31st. That way, when you’re tempted on January 3rd, you can look back and say, “If I can make it then, I can make it now.”

2. Replace, don’t omit

As creatures of worship and busy schedules, it’s not really possible to omit something from your life. We’re all completed puzzles, but if you take a piece out, we’re going to search frantically for something to fill in that missing piece. If you decide you want to play less video games, have something positive to fill in that block of time you usually play games. And make it fun! If you can afford it, go out for coffee during that time. If you’re trying to cut back on your cursing, learn to replace curses with blessings or positive words.

3. Commit to add 

When we think of New Year’s resolutions, we often think of depleting something from our lives, like sugar or bad habits or attitudes, or time spent online or in front of the TV. If you’re like me, you read too much, oft times at the expense of my loved one. So, instead of merely reading less, I am going to try to involve her in my reading more, and propose we read more together. If you watch too much TV, try watching things your kids would rather watch and join them in their interests. Add your loved ones to activities that have become solely about you.

4. Commit to fail

I’m an all-or-nothing kind of guy. If I fail once, I throw in the sack. But if I make room for imperfection, then I have a better chance at success in the long run. When I started this blog back in March I never made a commitment to post every single day. I just sort of generalized it by saying I’ll post 2-6 times a week. That’s a pretty big margin for failure if I’m committed to to posting every day. But 2-6 times a week – that’s doable, and it’s worked!  Leave room for imperfection.

5. Commit to achieve 

In exactly one year from this very moment, what do you want to look back on and say you’ve achieved? Want to have that book finally written or published? Want to have that degree in your hand? Want to have a stronger relationship with your spouse? Keep this future moment in mind. Every day. All year. And remember how fast a year goes by. It’s but a breath, so you really have very little time to achieve these goals.

Get a head start and begin today, before the 31st. Replace something bad with something good. Add things to enrich your life. Know your potential and leave room for imperfection. And always have the end in mind and imagine how wonderful it will be to reach it with a job well done.

Please help us achieve our goal to foster-to-adopt in 2013 by purchasing my book here.

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Moving Forward

Post Christmas blues. December 26th – the most depressing day of the year. I’m sure Ebenezer Scrooge once had this day marked on his calendar with smiley faces and highlights while the rest of the world cried boo-hoo-hoo like the Grinch wanted to hear from Whoville.

The wrapping paper is torn and thrown out, the Christmas cookies are half eaten, the sink is piled up with dirty dishes, work starts back up, and reality sets back in. Through the magic and joy of Christmas, the Curse sets back in and reminds us of our daily duties and responsibilities and the grudges and burdens we carried on December 23rd set themselves back upon our shoulders, causing us to mope and drag our feet with breaking backs.

Last night, as Christmas came to a dreadful close, I made a couple of promises as to how next Christmas will be better than this year. And I perked up a bit because I have an entire 365 days stretched out before me to ensure that I accomplish what needs to be done to make Christmas 2013 a year for Sarabeth to remember for the rest of her life.

It was hard, I admit, celebrating another Christmas without a baby giggling in a crib. But if God allows it, those sounds will ring through our house next Christmas morning, and God will provide a way for us to pursue our foster-to-adopt goals.

Some of you know that we have been keeping Sarabeth’s sister’s two dachshunds for the last fourteen months or so, as she and her husband are over-seas as missionaries. They’ll be back next year, which we’re SO excited for, but they’ll be taking Rox and Syd back. So, not only do I pray we have a baby in the house, but we’ll also have a new puppy.

So 2013, as I have it set in my heart, will be a really great year. Now, maybe relatives will die, and disasters will strike and finances might deplete. We can still rest at peace if we are daily walking with the Lord, because we know that whatever happens this coming year, God has already got it written out, and has permitted to happen.

And everything that happened this past year happened because God allowed it. Maybe you had a bad year, and there are things you want to do differently in 2013. If you’re like me, you’re wondering if you should bother making New Years resolutions. Well, here’s a rule I generally go by. If you keep thinking you ought to make a resolution, that means you probably need to make that resolution, no matter what time of year it is.

Resolutions aren’t something you decide you want to make and live by. They’re generally something you need to make. But make them while looking forward. If you had a bad year – maybe you fell into some nasty habits, or you strayed from your relationship with Jesus, or you haven’t been running from anger or selfishness, or you have been denying your calling – then commit to making this very moment in exactly one year from now, one where you look back and can say, “Some things happened that were out of my control, but overall, I’m more refined by God because I allowed Him to do a work in me that needed to be done.”

Wouldn’t that be beautiful? Wouldn’t that be a great moment? I should say that that would definitely make up for the Christmas blues!

Or maybe you had a great year. Then I still say, make next year even better. How can you be more loving to your family? How can you spend more time with the Lord? How can you be more kind to others?

“But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 3:13-14

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URGENT: Bring the Howells Back Together for Christmas

Our friend Adam Howell went to Africa a week ago to pick up their newly adopted one year old boy, Judah. Everything is in place as far as adoption paperwork is concerned (Judah is theirs!). Right now, they’re just waiting for their exit visa so they can come home and be with their family by Christmas. Adam, to be with his wife and kids and Judah to be with his new mommy, brother and sisters.

Adam and Liz just had their third child a month ago. So Liz would love to have Adam and their new son home by Christmas so they won’t have to spend the holiday on opposite sides of the globe. Below is a snippet of an email Adam sent out. Please pray that Adam and Judah can make it home to be with their family for Christmas. What a wonderful gift that would be! Share this on your facebook or blogs to raise as much prayer as possible.

Hey everyone.

First of all, thanks for all your prayers and support. It means more to me than you know. This is a very dark place in many aspects, and Iam more than ready to come home. The US has said we can come home… wehave Judah’s visa. However, the Congolese government hasn’t yet issued the exit letter to say that we can leave … [We're not] going anywhere until the Congo says we can. It’s crazy.

So, part of the update is to ask you guys to pray. We need the exit letter by Saturday at the latest in order for me to come home on Monday as scheduled.

See you soon,
Adam and Judah<><

Visit their blog here.

Herod’s Massacre

Home Alone and A Muppet’s Christmas Carol are amongst my favorite Christmas movies. And nothing screams “It’s Christmas!” like Ron Howard’s brilliant version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas (which he actually claims should be called Why the Grinch Stole Christmas). But do you want to know what movies put me more in a Christmas spirit than any of the aforementioned?

Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Bear with me. The reason The Lord of the Rings puts me in a Christmas spirit isn’t so much because they were all released in the theaters days before Christmas, but because they represent more closely than any Hallmark special could, what the first Christmas was like.

Bloodshed followed on the trail of the first Christmas day. God started a necessary spiritual war, and an evil king started an unnecissary earthly war against children. 

The Lord of the Rings is all about war, is it not? And more than that, it’s about good vs. evil. It’s about finding something precious and either destroying it or using it for great power. It’s about the smallest of creatures changing the course of history and saving the world from destruction. It’s about true love, sacrifice, miracles, hope, and the beauty of evil and evil-doers being destroyed for all time.

I tell you, pour yourself a glass of Fresh Market eggnog, nibble on some puppy chow, cuddle up with your loved one, and  you can’t get much more Christmasy than that.

King Herod, who reigned during the time of Jesus’ birth inflicted a war against children because he was jealous of the future reign of this promised baby, Jesus. Any male child two years old or under were choked, drowned, stabbed, beheaded, aborted…

“A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.” (Matthew 2:18)

A small town in America suffered its own massacre less than a week ago. Many parents now know the feeling of losing a child. They will daily, and involunterily recount in their minds what their child’s last thoughts were just before they were shot.

But King Herods and Adam Lanzas and Pharaohs are more numerous than we would like to imagine. We walk amongst them everyday. We bump shoulders with baby killers all the time. Abortion doctors, pediatricians who offer abortion as an option to confused couples, politicians who support abortion funding, deadbeat husbands and boyfriends who push their women to “get it taken care of.” Women who willfully decide to “get it taken care of.” Yes, even people who drive around with “Pro-Choice” bumper stickers.

Adam Lanza. Pharaoh. King Herod. Pure, unadulterated evil.

But that’s only one side of the Christmas story. You see, God came down as the one thing the king was after. He came down as a baby. I think that’s why our world is so lenient with baby killing, because somewhere deep in our conscious, we associate babies to the long-awaited Messiah. I bet if a study were done (and I’m sure it has), the same people who are proponents of kicking God out of school and the Bible from the White House, are the same ones who advocate for abortion.

But you see, Herod, in all of his rage and madness, couldn’t stop the Christ-child from growing up to be King of Heaven. It makes me wonder just how many other children have been saved by the divine hand of God. It’s easy to point to God when bad things happen and blame Him, but just how many crimes are conceived in minds that don’t bear fruit because of God’s intervention?

Just like in Lord of the RIngs, the smallest creature is chosen to save the world and do away with evil. God chose the most helpless of things, a baby, to grow up and become the most humblest of beings – humble enough to submit Himself to the authority of the corrupt politicians and willingly be stapled to a wooden beam and die an agonizing death, beaten, bloody, and naked, for all to see and mock.

That’s the Christmas story. The baby Jesus was an unwrapped gift from God tucked away under, not a tree, but a manger. And that gift loved the children who came to Him, felt the thumping of a pregnant woman’s belly, and made way for the Kingdom of God to open the gates for all of the children of the world, young in years and young in spirit.

And here’s the best part! The gates of Heaven are opened to the abortionists and corrupt politicians and King Herods, if only they would repent from their sins, turn to God, and accept Jesus as their Lord and Saviour. Make Him the best Christmas gift you will have ever received, and He will forget your sins like they never happened and accept you as a weeping child searching for a home.

That, my friends, is a Christmas story worth hearing.

Please help us get one step closer to adopting a child by purchasing my novel here. We’re trying to sell 1,600 copies by 2013.

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We Chose Death

I watched Beauty and the Beast for the first time as an adult the other night. Gotta say, it was even better than I remember it being. And it had me thinking about a lot of things, primarily about the idea of redemption. After all, that’s the biggest theme revolving around the story, isn’t it?

In a way, our world is like the Beast’s castle. Once upon a time we, and the earth’s inhabitants were perfectly happy, spotless, and free. It’s the world God intended it to be. When wars break out and starvation claims its millionth child and girls get raped, we tend to point our fingers and shake our fists at God and say, “How could you do this?”

And God looks back and says, “I didn’t.”

Our sins from just after the dawn of time, when that crunch of fruit echoed throughout eternity from some garden between two rivers, continues to invite the curse to stretch its fingers and choke us.

We are currently living under a curse and because of it, we are surrounded by terrorists, rapists, murderers, psychopaths, lunatics, liars, gossipers, haters, arsonists, perverts, cheaters, molesters, gluttons …beasts.

And you belong in that group, as do I. We are all beasts. No one, not one of us is who we were intended to be. We were intended to glorify God and bring Him praise and honor, and bear His image on the earth. But our ancestors weren’t content with that – and neither would we have been, may I point out – and they chose to glorify themselves.

And we make the same decision every single day, every hour of every day, almost with every single breath we take. It’s all about Me. With a capitol M.

Give me my Me time. Give my my HBO. Give me my Dexter. My comfort. My way. My handouts. Me. Me. Me. Roooaarrr!

We’re beasts. Vicious animals, at our best.

Because we’re cursed.

But the curse isn’t the end of the story. No. You see, a redeemer has been sent to us. A baby, even – born in a little barn in the middle of a little town in the middle of nowhere. A town called Bethlehem.

This baby knew our plight. He grew up amongst our sickness that we were blinded to. We declared we were sane until He declared us sick. We declared we were righteous, until He declared us sinners. And then we declared Him to be insane, sick, and a liar.

But He continued to walk and live amongst us, because He knew that redemption by His hand would draw near. He just needed to find a few people to believe Him, and be willing to accept it when He offered it.

The petals began to fall from the Enchanted Rose when Christ, the grown baby, hung from the cross and breathed His last.

The petals still fall today, and time grows shorter.

But the forgiveness and redemption Jesus offers is still available. He promises that one day this curse that we call “normal,” shall be lifted, because – and ONLY because – of what He has done for us on the cross.

And should you choose to accept His offer of redemption, you’ll find that your beastly ways will start to fall away like the pedals on the rose and the prince or princess God intended for you to be will begin to shine through.

And when the curse has lifted we will reign with Christ as kings and queens of a new Heaven and a new Earth.

Maranatha.

Click here for a beautiful song by Andrew Peterson about Life after the Curse.

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A Chilling Christmas

First off, thank you to everyone who downloaded a free copy of my book, The Man in the Box, yesterday! We gave away 600 e-books in the last three days! If you missed out on the free e-book give away, you can still get it here and help us reach our goal of 1600 by 2013! Please… keep spreading the word about it, and if you’ve read it, let me know your thoughts and post a short review on Amazon.

Sarabeth and I are reading A Christmas Carol together. This is the fourth consecutive year we’ve tried to do this, but this time I think we’re actually going to make it, now that we’ve made communal reading a regular habit throughout 2012! I’ve read it several times and I’ve got to say, it’s still one of the best books that has ever been written.

While A Christmas Carol focusses on the kind and charitable acts we can bestow upon each other, it, in some ways points us to the little scene in Bethlehem where God sent His most precious gift to us to save the lost and one day redeem the earth.

A perfect time for us to ponder over the good we’ve done for others (or lack thereof).

Not that our good deeds earn our ticket to Heaven or make God want to hug flowers and frolic through fields of lilac. But they still might mean the world to those “fellow travelers to the grave.”

Ponder this eerie passage from A Christmas Carol which haunts me even through spring and summer, and has kept me up some nights.

(Scrooge has just been visited by Marley’s Ghost – not the dog. He has been warned that he will be visited by three spirits in hopes that he might change his ways. Marley flees the room through Scrooge’s window and he follows. He looked out…)

The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley’s Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were free. Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a doorstep. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power forever. 

Think about it. We, right now, as living, breathing people, are not as powerless as we think. And one of those powers that each of us has been bestowed with is the power to help others.

Please share your thoughts of this haunting passage in the comments below. How does it make you feel like Christmas? Does it inspire you or scare you? How so? And, please share with us your favorite movie version of A Christmas Carol (we’ve all got one!).

Please help us reach our goal to foster-to-adopt by joining our campaign: 2016 by 2013.

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Irish Christmas Music

Last night, Sarabeth and I had the privilege of attending a beautiful concert by new Hymn writers and performers Keith and Kristyn Getty at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Pay attention to this post because they might be coming to your town, and you would be remiss in missing such a great opportunity.

You know that beautiful song, “In Christ Alone” that you sing at church? This is the couple that wrote that song (along with Stuart Townend), and a handful of other world-renowned hymns.

The Getty’s music is unique in that it even has its own genre: singable theology. And to make it even better, they tie their Irish roots in the sounds, blending it beautifully and seamlessly with a tinge of our ol’ country ring. (Their newest album, “Hymns for the Christian Life” features Alison Krauss, one of my personal favorite U.S. performers.) I mean, really – where else will you find a banjo and an accordion on the same stage?

I have posted a link to their Christmas tour below. If you see that they’re headed your way, jump on it in a heartbeat. Cancel anything else you have planned and go to this concert. It tells the Christmas story beautifully through new and traditional Christmas hymns. In fact, there were many times when I got choked up because of the audience participation they encouraged. At one point they had just the children join them in a new Christmas carol and soon everyone was caught up in the magic and purity of the moment.

Fans of the Brave soundtrack will be delighted and will recognize the beautiful uilleann pipes throughout the entire evening (played by Patrick D’Arcy). Never mind that I can’t pronounce it, it’s my favorite instrument! Though there are some tender and intimate moments, you’ll be rooting and dancing and cheering throughout the concert, begging, along with everyone else, for an encore. Oh, and did I mention that most of the songs are accompanied by a vocal choir that tends to steal the show?

Regardless, whether you can make it to the concert or not, you absolutely have to check out their music on itunes, and in particular, “Joy: An Irish Christmas.” It’s the perfect CD to get you in that old-time Christmas spirit.

I’d share more of the band’s impressive resume (including playing for former president George W. Bush at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville), but I’d rather you hear it for yourself to believe it.

Christmas Tour Schedule 

If you go to this concert or listen to the Getty’s music, please comment below to help spread the word about their ministry.

Also, my book, The Man in the Box premiers today! I know several people have already received their copies from Amazon. Make sure to get yours today by clicking here. It’s the perfect gift for the bookworms in your life! You can also get it for your Kindle here.

Also, they promote a great cause to help get children out of poverty. Visit Compassion to sponsor a child today.

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