• Resolved, to live with all my might while I do live.
• Resolved, never to lose one moment of time, to improve it in the most profitable way I can.
• Resolved, never to do anything which I should despise or think meanly of in another.
• Resolved, never to do anything out of revenge.
• Resolved, never to do anything which I should be afraid to do if it were the last hour of my life.^[1]

The preacher went on to explain Edward’s method of rehearsing these principles in his mind throughout his life, and while I haven’t necessarily adopted either the same resolutions or the same practice of refreshing them in my own life, they have provided an example for me to follow. The example is of a young man living with purpose and direction; A young man living with a zeal and passion for something in particular. It stands in stark contrast to the spirit of the age where many men in college still count gaming as a favorite activity, and spend untold hours leveling up and developing extreme precision with their thumbs and index fingers, to conquer an imaginary world that has no benefit either for this life, or the life to come.

I certainly acknowledge the freedom that we have in Christ to enjoy the good gifts that God has given us. I fully affirm ideas such as rest and recreation, but that is a completely different concept than what honestly amounts to an addiction to a fantasy world that pervades the dorms of most college campuses across America, Christian and secular alike.

The night before my 21^st birthday, January 31^st, 2012, I sat down in my dorm room at college and endeavored to draft my own list of resolutions. That list is buried somewhere in an external hard drive in my desk drawer in my room there at Manor Church right now. I felt self-conscious making up a list – I mean honestly, if I’m going to choose five or ten things that are Biblical concepts, how do I decide what should make the cut, out of all eleven hundred eighty nine chapters in the Bible. It’s not like there’s a guide at the end of Revelation 22 that gives the order that I should give to the daily details of my life. There’s no list that God gave for how often to read the pastoral epistles, or how many minutes to pray each morning and evening. There’s also no ranking system given to show which verses should be our favorite. Why John 3:16? Why not 2 Corinthians 5:21? Or what about Romans 3:21-26? Why not John 4:23-24?

I bring up all of these ideas and comments not to negate them, but to bring to light some of my various thoughts on things that come to mind at the end of the year: a time when we typically make resolutions. I think it’s very good to make resolutions. It’s a good thing to stop and evaluate ourselves and see where we are in life. It’s good to look at our lifestyle, habits, behaviors, attitudes, and relationships and see what needs to change. Many good things can come from an honest self-evaluation. My primary goals for the new year are related to physical and spiritual health. I’ve taken certain initiatives to make progress in areas such as making a prayer commitment for 2015, and an accountability partner. I’m also taking a class for school on Personal Spiritual Disciplines. In conjunction with this, I’m taking fewer credits than I’ve ever taken in grad school (8, instead of 16, 15, or 12), and also have recruited additional help for some of the food pickups that we do. All of these efforts should combine to make for a less crazy schedule, making it possible to get to sleep at a more reasonable hour, and then get up earlier, to spend a more meaningful and significant time in the Word and prayer each day. I’m too human to be able to work the kind of schedule we work and only get 5 hours of sleep each night. These goals then dovetail into physical goals. They are primarily started with having an awareness of what my physical health really looks like. I got a fitbit watch to keep track of things like steps taken and climbed each day. Using that same app/website I can record what I eat.

Living in a food pantry provides many benefits, but there’s also risk with the benefit. If I plan things well, I never run out of things to eat. The problem though is that it’s easy to get into a habit of eating “midnight snacks” every day. And no matter what my body might tell me, I don’t need to eat 800 calories at 12 or 1 am. I don’t need to eat cake or cupcakes after getting back from parking the van at 1:30 or 2 am. If I’m really hungry, I could eat an apple or drink a glass of water. The fitbit system can help by providing a platform for tracking both physical activity and food consumed. It has an enormous database of foods and products such that I can find Trader Joe’s cookies and record how many I ate.

Now many people have said “Andy, you don’t need to worry about this. You’re fine.” However, the reasoning for being aware of my health is multifaceted. One primary reason is that diabetes and heart disease run in my family. Last summer I had a period of time that stretched several weeks where I had somewhat regular chest pains. My blood pressure ranked me in the “hypertension” category, so I began a vigorous exercise regimen for the remained of the summer, and lowered all of my levels to a healthy level. Then I went into my masters degree at Bob Jones, trying to do the degree in one year, while continuing to serve with my “extension” church in the Atlanta area on Sundays, and doing the understudy for the spring opera, Aida. By the grace of God I made it through my obligations during the ’13-’14 school year and marched at commencement before receiving my diploma in August after finishing 2 summer school courses. In short: I’ve felt like a swimmer treading water in the pacific ocean for a very long, so I look forward to reorienting my life in 2015. No longer to be a slave to the urgent, instead, planning and carefully guarding from over committing myself (See, I learned something from DeYoung’s Crazy Busy!). In turn, the plan is to be able to give proper time to the spiritual, social, and physical areas that I see need attention.

I’ve already mentioned a prayer goal for the new year, but an additional one is to pray through the lists of names of people that attend the services. There are over seven-hundred different people attending the outreach services here.

Blogger Tim Challies shared his Bible reading goal for the new year, and it is this: To read at least one chapter in the Bible before checking his phone, computer, or other electronic device. I think this is a good goal, but I generally use my phone for my alarm, and my sleep schedule is still not consistent enough to be able to reasonably have a goal like that. For example: On night’s that I’m on the midnight food pickup, I rarely get back to the church before 1 am, and if I end up getting banana smeared down my arm, I’ll probably take a shower when I get back. All of that to say it’s pretty normal for me to be going to bed around 2 am on Saturdays and Sundays. My Bible reading goal then is simply to read my Bible every day. At least one chapter every day. I have book-marks at various places, so I know where I am in Genesis, Luke, Isaiah, and so on. (I’m a big believer in descriptive rather than prescriptive reading plans, btw)

One goal I have in the social/spiritual realm is to begin to do what essentially amounts to pastoral visitation. I intend to begin this tomorrow by checking on a man who frequently comes to services but I believe is in the hospital.

Anyway, I’ve rambled on for long enough.

We continue to have around 140 people attending services on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, receiving both physical and spiritual food. Pray that God would save the hundreds that are hearing the gospel each week.