Whether or not we make New Year’s Resolutions, we all do well to take time to consider where we are, where we’ve been, and where we need to go or grow. This is just part of how we make progress in life, but this is vitally important spiritually! We must give attention in 2014 to our spiritual growth.

* The cost is too high, not to:        What good is it for a man to gain the whole world and yet forfeit his soul? – Mark 8:36

* The reward is too precious to pass up:           No matter what other challenges the New Year brings for us, it always brings for us the challenge of “faith.” Faith is and has always been the ONLY thing that pleases God (Heb 11:1-2, 6).

* We don’t have to plan to fail, just fail to plan:        Sin first entered this world, not through faith in God, but through doubt of the goodness of God’s word. (Did God really say? Gen 3:1-5)

* There is a valid solution to failure:      The deception could have been avoided by “pure devotion” to God’s own word (2 Cor 11:3–4).

* God’s word will provide for us and prepare us:      (2 Pet 1:3; 2 Tim 3:16–17)

* This is our victory: Loving God, obeying His commands, and being born of Him through the water and the Spirit (1 Jn 5:3–4; Jn 3:3–5).

Know and rely on the love God has for us. What do we rely on?  Cain loved himself and brought stuff to God, but God didn’t want his stuff, he wanted Cain.  Cain did not rely on the love God had for him.  Able brought the best of what he had to God, he brought himself and relied on the love of God.

See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. For this is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another; not as Cain, who was of the evil one and slew his brother. And for what reason did he slay him? Because his deeds were evil, and his brother’s were righteous. (1 John 3:1, 11, 12 NASB)

There is no logical reason to obey the commands of God except that God loves us. If we have trouble loving our brothers and sisters it’s because we are having trouble understanding the love God has for us.

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. (1 John 4:7-11 NIV)

You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.  Or do you think that the Scripture speaks to no purpose: ” He jealously desires the Spirit which He has made to dwell in us”?  But He gives a greater grace. Therefore  it  says, “G od is opposed to the proud ,  but gives grace to the humble .”  Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.  Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.  Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.”  Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are  just  a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.  Instead,  you ought  to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.”  But as it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil.  Therefore, to one who knows  the  right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin. (James 4:4-8 and 4:13-17, NASB)

But have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God. For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal. (2 Corinthians 4 16-18, KJV)

James 4:4-8; James 4:13-17; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17