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Gleanings From The Word

Category: Romans

  • Resolve to be more Christ like

    Resolve to be more Christ like

    Hapy new year 2026

    With New Year’s Eve being tomorrow and the end of the holiday  and weekend, we will return on Monday, January 5.

    Yesterday, I touched on the celebration of the New Year and looked forward to what was to come. If you missed it, you can see it at https://gleaningsfromtheword.com/?p=3837

    It got me thinking about New Year’s resolutions. People have been making them for about 4000 years. The ancient Babylonians made the earliest known resolutions during a festival called Akitu, held in March (their new year). They resolved to repay their debts and return borrowed items in hopes of gaining the gods’ favor.

    By the fourth century AD, Christians were making resolutions that were more spiritual and reflective. Christians used the new year for self-examination, repentance, and renewal. Watch Night services encouraged believers to reflect on past mistakes and future improvement.

    Even today, many people make resolutions to change their behavior in the coming year. We’re not very good at keeping those resolutions, spiritual or otherwise. Statistics show that 80% of resolutions don’t last until the end of the first month, and only about 8% survive the year.

    We want to make changes solely out of sheer willpower. Yet, our flesh and wills are weak.

    I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. Romans 12:1-2

    What if we resolve to be more Christ like? How can we do it?

    We redevote ourselves to Him.

    We can resolve to pray more, love more, read the Bible more, fast, give more, serve, or do whatever we think will make us more like Jesus. The way will look different for all of us, although there will be common elements.

    It’s still going to be a day-by-day, moment-by-moment, and decision-by-decision process to do that. We’re going to fail many times. We have to keep working at it. 

    One source puts it this way, “Becoming more Christ like is the desire of every believer, and it is encouraging to know that God has the same desire for us. In fact, the Bible says that God “predestined [believers] to be conformed to the likeness of his Son” (Romans 8:29). Making us Christlike is God’s work, and He will see it through to the end (Philippians 1:6).”

    It is an impossible task on our own, but with the Holy Spirit, it will happen.

    It’s not something that will change overnight; the journey of sanctification (being made holy) is lifelong. We need to stay the course, repenting and turning back when we fall down.

    His goal is to make us more like Jesus. Let’s allow Him to work in us so that the task becomes easier.

    Celebrate the little victories. Turn back from the failures and trust.

    God will have His way. The changes may be incremental, but the results over time will be huge. We can say, “I’m not yet where I want to be, but by His grace I’m not where I used to be.”

    May God richly bless you and may you resemble Jesus more each passing day. Happy New Year, my friends. May you become more Christ like.

    Praise His name.

    Be blessed, 

    Kevin

    The call of the gospel

    Right belief or right living?

    Read the Word

    Jesus never changes – celebrate the truth

  • Called to right beliefs and right living

    Called to right beliefs and right living

    I have spent some time recently on a relatively new (at least to  me) social media platform, reading the “Christian” post section and follow-up comments.

    I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was astounded by the range of error, heresy, and just plain biblically illiterate posts there are. Some of the posts are from people genuinely seeking guidance or information, but most make me shake my head. 

    Like any form of social media, it was filled with plenty of people who hold the view, “my mind is made up, don’t clutter it with facts or truth.”

    Every cliche and trope imaginable is out there.

    The Bible has too many, or too few, books. The church has deliberately hidden books from the Bible. You can only trust that person’s favorite translation. You can’t trust any translation and must read it in the original languages.

    If you don’t belong to a specific denomination, you are going to hell. 

    The cults are out recruiting. The Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Latter-day Saints are trolling for the unwary. Other weird groups I had never even heard of are doing the same.

    The Roman Catholics and Protestants are busy bashing each other. Still, neither side has any understanding of church history, or what their own position actually believes, let alone what the opposition thinks. Now, there is a lot to debate, but it should be done in love and with understanding.

    The God of Islam is the same as the God of Christianity.

    Everyone is going to be saved, or no one needs saving. Hell isn’t real.

    The range of poor understanding and deliberate twisting of Scripture is nothing short of phenomenal. 

    The church worship wars still rage, with only the poster’s personal choice of music being from God, and everything else is from Satan.

    The doctrine of salvation by faith is disputed. You need to add various combinations of church membership, tithing, good works, baptism, and more to be saved, at least according to many posters who claim to be believers.

    Church buildings are too simple, too extravagant, or not needed at all.

    This one hurt my head, “I don’t believe in God, but I’m a Christian because I follow the teachings of Christ.” I think it was George Bernard Shaw who initially said it, but it still boggles my mind.

    I could carry on and list all the heresies that have plagued the church, and every conceivable form of divisiveness, but I think you can get a sense of things from what I have said.

    The apostle Paul would need to be writing corrective letters nonstop and employing a huge ministry team to deal with it all. We’re as messy as the first-century church, and every century since then. The church is messy because it’s filled with redeemed sinners and incomplete knowledge, but it remains God’s church.

    If you ever needed proof that God was loving and patient, look no further than the church. Only God could keep such a messed-up, disparate group of people somehow functioning together despite our flaws and best intentions.

    There isn’t a church group or a Christian alive who hasn’t got at least some part of the picture wrong.

    Now, it isn’t proper theology that saves us. Yet, being saved is just the entry point to becoming all Christ calls us to. We are called to grow in knowledge, understanding, faith, and love.

    We are called to both right beliefs and right living; both orthodoxy and orthopraxy are huge.

    But that is not the way you learned Christ!— assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. Ephesians 4:20-24

    I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. Romans 12:1-2

    Let’s have the beliefs and lives that Christ calls us to. Let’s strive together to represent the hope and image of Jesus better.

    Be blessed, 

    Kevin

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    Check these out

    Right belief or right living?

    Where do you find the truth? Read the Word.

    Well done good and faithful servant