The Right Resolutions.

Photo by NordWood Themes on Unsplash

Okay, I really should have published this on New Year’s Day but this year I really struggled with my New Year resolutions. As I look back over 2017 I am amazed - at the beginning of the year I could never have imagined the events that unfolded.

On 1st January 2017, I had no idea that I would be leaving World Vision and would instead be travelling all over the country talking about a best-selling book, that my magnum opus would be shortlisted as Christian Biography of the Year; that I would be planning my own TV show to air in 2018 with Christian channel TBNUK; that I would be working as a consultant with amazing leaders such as the Bishop of Oxford Steven Croft or that I would be exploring devoting more of my time to working within n the church. This in the year when I truly appreciated the truth of Psalm 19:21 ‘Many are the plans in a person's heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.’

When God told me that ‘I will not die but will live and declare the works of the Lord’ (Psalm 118:17’, I was overcome with gratitude and vowed to consecrate my life to him, but then tried to obey him while still maintaining the status quo. God it seems had more radical plans.

So come the beginning of 2018, as I started creating lists - join ballet class to get more exercise, eat more kale e.t.c. - iIt seems a rather trivial exercise. What I really need to do is to truly put Christ at the centre of my life with all that implies in terms of being obedient to his will and not my own.

So this year I have finally written a simple but incredibly challenging set of New Year Resolutions:

• To see Christ more clearly
  
• To love Christ more dearly
  
• And to follow Christ more nearly – wherever that may take me.
  

Kate Nicholas’s best-selling book Sea Changed is available from Waterstones and Christian bookstores throughout the UK and online at eden.co.uk and Amazon worldwide.