Why I Hate Resolutions

Yesterday, during our Sunday morning Bible study time, I told my youth that I hate New Year's resolutions. I was met with a few quizzical glances so I went on to explain why I hold such disdain for resolutions. I hate them because, inevitably, you break them and then you use that as an excuse to give up on whatever it is that you were resolving to do to begin with. (Now, to those of you that manage to keep your resolutions, kudos to you, feel free to ignore the rest of this, for everyone else, keep reading). For example, the ever popular, "I'm going to exercise x times a week resolution," you start out with much gusto, you meet your goal of exercising x times the first week of the year, you make even exercise x+1 times that first week, but as time goes by, you have a week where you only exercise x-1 times and the next thing you know, you have quit exercising all together. Feeling defeated, you give up on your resolution. You think to yourself, oh well, I will just try again next year. Or maybe you restart your goal at the beginning of February or March before giving up all together.  And the next year, you make the same resolution and yet again, you fail, and it becomes a vicious cycle. Resolutions have created a world in which we excuse ourselves from doing something for the rest of the year because we failed to meet our original goal. It's a cop out and it's dangerous. Instead of making a list of resolutions every year, why not just strive to give every day your best? I explained to the youth that this doesn't mean that its not good to have goals, because it is, you should have goals and strive to meet those goals. I then played them the Toby Mac's song, Eye On It (see below) and we read 1 Corinthians 9:24-27 (see below) and discussed what it means for runners to work hard to win races and how that relates to the Christian race, and what it means to live our lives with our "Eye on the prize."  I told them that most athletes don't give up after losing one game, and the same goes for us. We need to live our lives as Christians much like runners training for a marathon. This means that we should exercise (read our Bible, go to Church, pray, etc.) That we should surround ourselves with trainers (Christian mentors) that can guide us and teammates (Christian friends) that can encourage us and help us along the way.  We then discussed what the importance of setting reasonable goals. For example, to go from rarely reading your Bible to attempting to read 5 chapters a day is setting yourself up for failure. Someone who hasn't run in years doesn't go out and try and run 5 miles, and neither should they. Instead of 5 chapters a day, start smaller, maybe 5 verses a day for 5 days a week. Set a pace that will help will set them up for success, not failure. And last, but not least, when you do miss a day or a week or even months, don't use that as an excuse to quit all together, just start again, set a different pace and find what works best.  Ironically, they misheard the lyrics to the song, thinking that they were "I own it," so I used the misheard lyrics to teach another lesson. I told them that they need to own their lives and be responsible. Don't pull an Adam and Eve and blame others, own your mistakes and move on, try harder and live every day with your "eye on the prize."

 "Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it.  Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified." 1 Corinthians 9:24-27, ESV 

Here is TobyMac's "Eye On It" Video: