How to keep your New Year’s resolutions.
You are the problem; you can’t also be the solution.
Listen, I’m not an expert in human behavior. I haven’t done all the research on what allows some behavior change goals to stick and others to fall short.
All I know is what the Bible says about our hearts and our flesh.
Our hearts are deceitful and desperately wicked
Our flesh is weak and corrupt
But what do we often do when choosing New Year’s resolutions?
We’re thinking about what we want to change and how we should accomplish that change.
What we want = our hearts
How we accomplish = our flesh
Without realizing it we end up trusting our heart and our flesh with goals that are supposed to change our lives. But that’s impossible. Our heart and flesh are the problem—how could those two also lead us into life-changing behavior?
So what we’re going to look at today is how to actually keep our New Year resolutions. However, if you’re someone who is over it and doesn’t want to do any sort of resolution type of thing but you want to grow, I highly recommend this article from
: To Guard Against & Be Guided Toward. Young makes a compelling argument for not having resolutions but setting up a Rule of Life that will guide you into the type of life you want to live.Now, with all that, let’s talk about practically keeping these resolutions we’re setting.
As a reminder, there are two things we have going against us when it comes to resolutions: Our hearts and our flesh.
Unfortunately, those are the very two things we tend to rely on when it comes to making life changes. What do I want, and how do I accomplish it with my ability?
We need to shift from self-driven behavior modification to spirit-led behavior redemption. When our mindset is behavior modification, it’s as if we’re putting a band-aid on problems that require surgery. Even though we may achieve a desired behavior in one area of life, we run into issues in other areas.
Example: You may start working out but your Bible reading slips.
Example: You may start praying more as you go but devoted time in prayer comes to a halt.
Example: You may add a hobby but your family starts to feel neglected.
These are all examples of modified behavior that left gaps in other areas of life.
But what about behavior redemption? How is that different?
Behavior redemption starts with the confident assertion about our own shortcomings.
“I am doing something that is out of alignment with God’s best for me.”
The difference is that this has nothing to do with our personal goals and everything to do with God’s Abundant Life. God gave us his Spirit to lead us into an abundant life, so when we begin to think about behavior redemption, we must include the Spirit of God in our consideration.
When our mindset is on our personal goals, and we look inward at what we might think is best for our lives, we will inevitably come up short. We may begin to modify something that God actually would prefer for us to put to death. Not only that, when we include the spirit of God in our behavior redemption process then we start to see clearly why our behavior is the way that it is and how we got out of line in the first place.
My personal story
I have spent too many years with a New Year’s resolution to work out. Since retiring from baseball, I’ve struggled to work out consistently, and every new year promised to be the change I needed. I would plan well, sign up for new memberships, and make time for it. Most years, I saw success for a month or two, but then I fell off just like the year before.
My inconsistency has always brought shame and embarrassment. I would ask myself, “How could you not do this? You’re a former professional athlete!” Eventually, I would cycle out of that way of thinking because I knew it wasn’t good for me, and I would simply write off my lack of consistency to a busy schedule.
However, something new happened this year. I involved the Holy Spirit.
And you know what the Spirit showed me?
That the reason I’ve never been able to work out consistently is because I’m self-centered.
That doesn’t even make sense. Self-centered? You’d think if I were focused only on myself, I would work out whenever I wanted to, to the neglect of my family.
But look at it this way with me:
Self-centered people only do what they want to without considering anyone else around them. And when I considered it, this tracked.
I only worked out when I wanted to. If I didn’t want to, I wouldn’t. This led to bad habits because who really wants to workout every day?
I didn’t consider that my wife and children needed me to be strong and healthy. I was self-centered and did not consider their needs.
I never wanted to do anything hard → So I didn’t do hard workouts → So I didn’t see results → So I would often quit.
I was self-centered and focused on me, myself, and my flesh.
As a God-fearing, Bible-reading, Holy Spirit led man I would have never in 1,000,000 years guessed that the reason I wasn’t working out is because I was self-centered. But the Holy Spirit knew that was the problem.
Behavior Redemption often means repentance.
I could not move forward without repenting. First, because self-centeredness is a sin, and second, because to become the man God wants me to be means I need to drop that and begin living others focused.
Think about all the other potential resolutions I could make and probably need to focus on within the next year?
Becoming more generous
Taking my wife on regular dates
Spending one-on-one time with my daughters
Spending less time on my phone and more time being present
Investing more money
Reading more often
Do you know what all of those have in common? If I’m not doing them, it’s because I’m being self-centered. I’m focused only on myself and what I want rather than what the people around me may need from me.
By default, if I work hard to put to death the sin of self-centeredness, I’m going to become the type of person who is more generous, loving my family better, and someone who invests more in financial, mental, physical, relational, and spiritual health.
And here’s the beautiful thing about behavior redemption—the Holy Spirit does all the redeeming. God is the one who takes dead things and brings them back to life.
So, my goal for 2025 must be to walk more intimately with the Holy Spirit—doing precisely what God is commanding me to do and empowering me to do in every moment. That type of life will lead to an abundant and fruitful life. That type of life will mean that whatever “resolution” God wants me to make in the New Year is actually possible for me and won’t be a forever source of shame because I can’t quite figure it out.
So when you consider your resolutions, remember: You are the problem; you can’t also be the solution. God can take any broken person and redeem them. Our task is to let Him do that by cooperating with Him every step of the way.
Thanks for reading along,
—Brandon
Makes a lot of sense. Thanks for sharing this. Always very good for application.
I loved the concept of behavior redemption. What you described here made me think of what Arthur Brooks (a happiness expert—and a devout Catholic) says about resolutions for the new year. He talks about it in his recent book (co-written with Oprah), but here's the same idea from his most recent newsletter:
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Many self-help guides suggest making a bucket list on January 1 or your birthday, so as to reinforce your worldly aspirations. Making a list of the things you want is temporarily satisfying, because it stimulates dopamine. But it creates attachment, which in turn spurs dissatisfaction, as we just learned.
Consider instead making a “reverse bucket list.” This is what I now do each January 1 and again on my birthday, I list my wants and attachments—those that fit under Thomas Aquinas’s definition of worldly idols (money, power, pleasure, and honor). I try to be completely honest. I don’t list stuff I would actually hate and never choose, like a sailboat or a vacation house. Rather, I go to my weaknesses, most of which—I’m embarrassed to admit—involve the admiration of others for my work.
Then, I imagine myself in five years. I am happy and at peace, living a life of purpose and meaning. I make another list of the forces that would bring me this happiness: my faith, my family, my friendships, the work I am doing that is inherently satisfying and meaningful and that serves others.
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It's behavior redemption in a way. I loved the ending of your piece too: "You are the problem; you can’t also be the solution. God can take any broken person and redeem them. Our task is to let Him do that by cooperating with Him every step of the way."