The entire world has no doubt made resolutions for year 2026. However, what's left unsaid is that it is impossible to improve what God has condemned. This pernicious lack of knowledge, sadly, persists to this day. God is not interested in reforming the old man. His only solution is Execution and the best news is that it took place more than 2000 years ago.

Until we understand this, we will keep making resolutions and breaking them going round and round in circles like the ancient Israelites in the wild.

The early church conquered the known world in one generation. They didn't have technology, social status, political protection but a community life centred on seeking God's face. From invisible prayer came visible revival that transformed the world.

The above is a terrifying prospect indeed but a natural consequence given that today's generation is obsessed with visibility but in the process we are becoming invisible to the Lord. Today, we are spiritually and morally bankrupt. If the Mosaic Law were to be instituted now, then we would see most nations losing almost a quarter of their population at one stroke.

The spiritual temperature of most of our churches is sub zero. All our experiences are broadcast to the world and we are as clanging cymbals, noise devoid of any meaning, performance without presence.

Without private worship there is a distinct lack of intimacy and this is a matter of grave concern because at the very core of Christianity is fellowship with the Almighty. Its a relation between the creator and created, father and child, bridegroom and bride. In fact, one of the purposes of redemption itself, is to bring us to God.

Christianity has become the means to an end, a sort of morphed reality of itself where people do not want the person of the Lord but His blessings, they want heaven but do not want to die. The true gospel is a call to die to the world. James brings out this truth rather harshly but succinctly —

The gospel has been distorted into a self help manual with Bible verses. Though projected as a pathway to success covered with a religious veneer, it is but heresy dressed in evangelical clothes.

In reality Christian spirituality has to do primarily with sanctification and this is a work in progress, Dying To Self Daily.

This is why presenting our bodies as a living, bloodless sacrifice on the altar (ref Romans 12:1) is so hard. It requires divine grace (First and Always) and deliberate human cooperation.

This sacrifice is hard, very hard. It cost Abraham, Paul, Jesus and so also it will cost us. However, what we stand to gain is much much more. For when we let go of everything, our hands become free to receive all that God wants to give us.

This is the language of sacrifice, the language of the cross. We do not need to make resolutions for the new year but just one sacrifice 👇

When God asked for Issac as a sacrifice, He was asking for all of Abraham’s dreams. Abraham had waited 25 years for his son.

God is with His children all of the way. God does not want our Issac but our complete surrender to His will. What He really wants is to break the last bastion of our independence.