Dearly Beloved,

Today marks the 7th day out of the 15 days of the Chinese New Year celebration. And everything that is associated with Chinese New Year, the biggest Chinese festivity is meant to reflect good luck, good health, prosperity and success. Success is an important word that everyone likes. As many as there are those who have achieved success to enjoy it, it is also the grief of many that it has eluded. Success can come in many forms depending on how we define it and what we are searching for in life. How does a Christian define success and what does it take for a Christian to be successful? There are yardsticks in the world to measure wealth, power, position and prestige. But to measure spiritual success as a Christian may be tough, why is this so? It is because there is no tangible evidence that can prove that you are living a successful Christian life. A Christian’s success is internal rather than external and that being so, it is even harder to measure the Christian life in a materialistic world. However, Psalm 1 has the necessary guidelines of success that we can follow to live the successful Christian life.

A Successful Christian’s Path

Psalms 1:1, “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.” A Christian does not believe like the wicked, he does not behave like the wicked and he does not belong to the wicked.

A Successful Christian’s Delight

Psalms 1:2, “But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.”  A Christian loves the Word of God and to him it is the Word of truth, God-breathed, infallible, inerrant and absolutely perfect and preserved.

A Successful Christian’s Prosperity

Psalms 1:3, “And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.” The Lord will prosper the believer who walks in His path and whose delight is in His Word. That is not to say that there will be no storms in one’s life but a believer who is separated from the world unto Christ, will with Christ sail through every storm until it is calm again. Do you have the characteristics to be a successful Christian? And a successful Christian is also described to be a blessed man, whereby he is successful without being self-righteous but imputed with the righteousness of Christ.

Elder Douglas Ho

Resolutions

Another New Year is upon us. For many of us there have been too many and they come too quickly. As Christians we understand the idea of new beginnings. In salvation God has given us new life and new hope. We know that we don’t have to wait for New Year for a second chance to get things right. God’s grace is available to us as long as we have breath in our lungs.

However, celebrating the New Year can help us to refocus our efforts, redirect our thoughts, and remedy lingering weaknesses in our lives so that we might live more holy lives. To that end, we make New Year’s resolutions.

Many of my spiritual heroes made resolutions of their own.

Jonathan Edwards, the great Puritan preacher, kept a diary. In that diary he wrote 70 resolutions, things that he resolved to do. Many of us would do well to emulate his resolve. “Resolved, that I will do whatsoever I think to be most to God’s glory and to my own good, profit, and pleasure, in the whole of my duration, without any consideration of the time, whether now or never so many myriads of ages hence.”

Another Puritan, Matthew Henry, had great resolve, as well.
“I do in the beginning of this New Year solemnly make a fresh surrender of myself, my whole self, body, soul, and spirit, to God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, my Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier, covenanting and promising, not in any strength of my own, for I am very weak, but in the strength of the grace of Jesus Christ, that I will endeavour this year to stand complete in the Will of God.”

What resolutions are you going to make this year? Lose weight? Find time? Break habits? Mend fences?

I would like to suggest a few things that we all should be resolved to do in the New Year:

1. Praise God for every new day (Psalm 118:24)
2. Read through the Bible (2 Timothy 3:16-17)
3. Pray daily for one another and the church (1 Thessalonians 5:17)
4. Share your faith with at least one new person each week (Romans 10:14)

May Matthew Henry’s New Year’s prayer be ours :

“Lord grant that this year I may be more holy, and walk more closely than ever in all holy conversation; I earnestly desire to be filled with thy holy thoughts, to be carried out in holy affections, determined by holy aims and intentions, and governed in all my words and actions by holy principles. O that a golden thread of holiness may run through the whole web of this year.”

(Adapted from http://www.christianity.com/Home/Christian%20Living%20Features/11597513/)