DEVOTION / About your New Year's resolutions

How are your New Year resolutions coming?

The best resolution

Thomas Manton (1620–1677, an English Puritan clergyman) offers sound advice for crafting a New Year's resolution. A man's greatest care should for that place where he dwells longest; therefore eternity should be in his scope.

New Year's resolutions frequently focus on the places we live. Perhaps your New Year's resolutions prompt you to begin the house remodeling you've put off for years. Perhaps your resolutions include remodeling your body because it has fallen into disrepair.

Resolve to focus on heaven

Manton urges that we look beyond body and abode. Neither will last more than a few decades. But there is a home that will last forever. A home not built by human hands. A building God has constructed for us. A gift of his grace. An eternal house in heaven (2 Corinthians 5:1).

Jesus is the guarantee that home awaits. Paul insists, We know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you to himself (2 Corinthians 4:14).

For that reason and with more commitment than any other goals we strive for, we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal (2 Corinthians 4:18).

Keep heaven in your scope

Grace proves we will dwell the longest in heaven with our God. We will live there infinitely longer than we will live anywhere else. Manton is right. Our dwelling forever in heaven should be in our scope. It cries out to be our constant scope.