New Year or Same Year?

I first want to say Happy New Year to all those who read my blog.  I want to also thank you all for taking the time to read my blog.  I have received some extremely positive feedback from many of you.  And I urge you to continue reading and sending me comments and emails. 

This is the time of year where we all make resolutions.  "I'm going to lose weight this year."  "I'm going to stop smoking." "I'm going to get out of debt". "I'm going to start that business, write that book, take my dream vacation, etc.  And I think we really mean our resolution at the time that we say it.  But, then by February 1st, those resolutions that we were so firm in achieving are but distant memories.  "WHY?"

My opinion is that many times, we run into familiar brick walls.  And instead of finding a way over the wall, we look back at our lives and find that things are okay the way they are.  We become content, and then our contentment turns to apathy. 

I was talking to a friend of mine a couple of days before the new year and I asked her what was her goal for the next five years of her life. She had some wonderful goals.  The main thing that she said is that she wanted for God to use her, and she wanted everything that she did to represent Jesus.  I was excited for her.  Later in the conversation she began to tell me about the difficulty she was having within a certain ministry in her church. She told me that the person who was in charge of the ministry would ask her to take the lead in some things.  My friend would work very hard to offer her talent and expertise.  The leader of this ministry would then poke holes and undermine everything that my friend was doing.  I could see my friend's frustration.  But then she said something that dumbfounded me.  My friend said that since this leader of this certain church ministry was being so combative, my friend decided that she would no longer take the lead if this leader asked her to.

Now this is the same friend who just an hour ago, had such faith in the calling that God had on her life.......and in the next breath was ready to give up.  What I will say is this.  My friend is EXTREMELY gifted naturally in this area of ministry, and not only is she naturally gifted she has backed up her natural talent with years of training. Her pastor has seen how gifted she is, and he has asked her to be a part of the ministry so that the ministry will grow.  He wants for my friend to show the leader how to lead and how to stretch out into different technicals aspects of this art form.  But my friend is already defeated by someone else's attitude.  And I told her that she was contradicting herself.  How can you want to be on this higher level for the Lord in your God given calling.................but when you run into bricks walls you just walk away and wait for something easier.

I think that deep in our hearts and minds we REALLY DO want to conquer something new in our lives.  We want to stop smoking or lose weight or whatever..................but we don't want to put in the work that it takes to accomplish the desires of our hearts.  We give up at the first sign of trouble.  We have no plan B.  We have no other strategies.  We look up and months pass and years pass and decades pass and we are still at the starting gate.

I cry a lot at movies............and one scene that ALWAYS does it to me is "An Officer and a Gentleman".  BUT........not the scene when Mayo goes to the paper factory at the end in his white suite.  The scene that ALWAYS gets me is the scene where "Seeegar" ( the female cadet ) is trying to get over the wall on the obstacle course.  The only thing that stands between her becoming a Naval Officer is completing this obstacle course.  She tries with all that she has to get over the wall.  She is crying in failure and has given up. She is a ball of mangled failure, and she is physically laying in front of the wall. Then Mayo comes back and he hollars at her...."YOU PUT ONE HAND OVER THE WALL AND YOU CLIMB THAT WALL.............DON'T YOU FALL!  PULL YOURSELF UP!........YOU WALK THAT WALL..........and she does!  She finally climbs the wall.  Now.............even if she had not of climbed that wall she was qualified to be a Naval Officer in every other way.  But that wall was almost the death of her.

Many of us are qualified to achieve our resolution.  But we have our own walls that make us throw up our hands and say "I'll throw it all away because this wall is kicking my butt."  But we need to declare war on the apathy within us.  We need to stare fear down!  We need to gutt laziness! We need to pimp slap weakness!  We need to call upon our greatness to come and take over. That is the spirit of God that lives in us all.   If things were easy then everyone would be a millionaire.  If things were easy then everyone who wanted to could be in the Olympics.  If things were easy everyone would be a Platinium selling artist, or Best Selling Author, or World Renouned Scientist, or Nobel Prize Winner.  We have to push past the pain through to the other side.

I stopped smoking in 2010.   I used to be ashamed to admit that I smoked..........especially with me being a vocalist.  But April of 2010 my birthday month I decided that enough was enough.  It was easy to stop, but what was hard is when I began to get the urge to smoke.  I dug in REAL HARD and I decided that risking cancer was not worth the satisfaction I would feel if I smoked.  IT WAS REAL HARD.  But I climbed that wall.  I have some other walls to climb and I will climb them just like I climbed that smoking wall. 

So I say have a TRUE NEW YEAR.  Stick to your resolution.  Understand that in order to achieve something that you have never ever achieved before, you are going to have to do something that you have never done.  You are going to have to push yourself harder.  You are going to SQUARE OFF with that brick wall in your life!  BE PREPARED FOR THAT.  The thief cometh not but for to steal and to kill and to destroy!  The devil does not want to see us succeed by any form or fashion.  The harder we fight, the higher he will build the wall.  But the second part is .........BUT I have come that you might have life, and have it more abundantly.  So all I am saying to my friend is that................if you want to be used by the Lord, then you can expect that devil to show up within 10 minutes of God speaking the vision into your heart.  And I am saying to all of us and my self included is that we have to WALK THAT WALL.  We have to push past the obstacles and we have to climb the mountains.  The mountains and obstacles are in the fine print of our wonderful resolutions.  When you set out to do something great and out of the ordinary................obstacles and mountains are included. 

So if we really and truly want to have a New Year and Not the Same year we need to dig in and do the work.  But on the opposite end of the work is the glory and satisfaction of knowing that you had what it took.

Let 2011 be your year!  DIG IN and Don't be afraid to get dirty, to get sweaty and to get scratches. Have a true Happy New Year!