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New Year’s Day is a distant memory. How is your resolve?

New Year’s and birthdays are natural times for me to reflect. Looking back I assess my year. Gazing ahead I set goals. What I have discovered is that resolutions are worthless without resolve. I see this in Scripture and I see it in history.

Solomon greets me when I open the Proverbs. His counsel? Get after it son!

The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing, while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied. Proverbs 13:4 ESV

I see resolve written across the pages of biographies I read. Consider the great Puritan preacher Jonathan Edwards. George Marsden notes that “Jonathan undertook the Puritan practice of framing a set of resolutions to discipline himself, adding new entries as needed.” Some of Edwards’ written resolutions:

• “Never to do any manner of thing, whether in soul of body, less or more, but what tends to the glory of God; nor be, nor suffer it, if I can avoid it.”
• “To maintain the strictest temperance in eating and drinking.”
• “Never to lose one moment of time; but improve it the most profitable way I possible can.”
• “My time is so short that I have not time to perfect myself in all studies: wherefore resolved, to omit and put off, all but the most important and needful studies.”

A little closer to our day, both presidents Theodore Roosevelt (TR) and Harry Truman exercised the resolve of purpose. Frail as a child, young Teddy Roosevelt resolved to “make” his body after his father chided him with these words:

Theodore, you have the mind but you have not the body, and without the help of the body the mind cannot go as far as it should. You must make your body. It is hard drudgery to make one’s body, but I know you can do it.

Roosevelt’s biographer notes that “the boy threw himself into a strict regimen of strength and endurance training,” a methodical drudgery that paid dividends in his physique and no doubt fed his fierce determination as a thinker, writer, politician, and explorer.

Harry Truman assumed the presidency upon the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Shortly after taking office he said,

I accept with humility the honor which the American people have conferred on me. I accept it with a resolve to do all I can for the welfare of this nation and for the peace of the world.

This was no lofty platitude. Truman would labor for the next seven years to fulfill that commitment.

I was thinking about Edwards, Truman, and Roosevelt as I reflected on 2014 and looked ahead to this New Year. Each understood that dreams must be tethered to an iron resolve.

Solomon reminds me that the fruit of resolve is sweet indeed:

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life (Proverbs 13:12). A desire fulfilled is sweet to the soul (Proverbs 13:19).

This brings me to February 6, 2015.

What are your resolutions? How is your resolve?

I am asking myself these questions? I started this post almost a month ago, but it has been collecting dust in my draft folder. Why? Because thinking through resolutions and then breaking out the resolve necessary to bring them to fruition is hard work.

It is hard work, but it is God-honoring and God-empowered work. Nehemiah rebuilt the walls around Jerusalem because he was resolved to do so. Paul tells me that “self-control” (a synonym of resolve in my book) is a fruit of the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:23).

Jonathan Edwards added new entries to his list of resolves. That tells me he was checking up on himself to better honor God with his one and only life. That seems like a great practice. Today seems like a great day.

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1. “Jonathan Edwards undertook…” and resolve list from George Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life. New Haven: Yale University Press. 2003. Pages 50-52; 95.
2. “Theodore you have the mind…” from The Bully Pulpit by Doris Kearns Goodwin. New York: Simon & Schuster. 212. Page 39.
3. “The boy threw himself into a strict regimen…” from The Bully Pulpit, 39.
4. “I accept with honor…” from Truman by David McCullough. New York: Simon & Schuster. 1992. Page 729.

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven” (Ecclesiastes 3:1). Apparently this includes getting old.

I was in Memphis last week. I stopped at a McDonald’s on my way to a meeting to grab a cup of coffee and a Sausage Biscuit. The receipts reveal my secret. I have a penchant for both coffee and the McDonald’s Sausage Biscuit. The latter is my traveling treat.

Opting out of the drive-thru, I ran in to place my order. When the woman behind the counter handed me my breakfast I thought she said, “Sausage Biscuit and ‘SENIOR’ coffee.”

“Hmmm. That’s strange. I didn’t ask for a Senior Coffee.”

When I climbed back into my rental, I looked at the receipt. Sure enough: “1 Snr Coffee.”

Life passage here! I received a senior coffee without asking for it. I posted this momentous occasion to Instagram and Facebook. The world needed to know this, right?

My pride took a hit that morning, but my wallet was in a very good mood. I got a cup of coffee for .69 cents! How sweet is that? Then I got home and the sweetness turned just a little sour.

As I emptied receipts out of my wallet I noticed not one, but two receipts marked “1 Snr Coffee.” Two receipts from two different days from two different Mickey D’s. Was this a conspiracy?

I had lunch with two of our sons (31 and 25) while I was in Memphis. I shared with them that some days I get up and look in the mirror and say, “You’re looking pretty good.” On other days, “Dude, you are looking old!” Apparently, the staff at McDonald’s caught me on “old days.”

No matter. I am framing the receipts. They are going on my Inspiration Shelf, the ten-foot piece of blonde oak that rides over the west window of my office. It holds pictures of Lou Gehrig, Jackie Robinson, a Gumby action figure, Detroit Tigers cap, jar of marbles, and a number of other items that have sentimental and inspirational value.

My pair of “1 Snr Coffee” receipts will serve as my visual reminder of the Psalmist’s words, “So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12).

Life is short. The world is complex. I need wisdom. God gives it.

Watching the news last night I see escalating conflicts around the world and increasing loss of absolutes here at home. As I think about our church, I see new challenges to live as a vibrant people of God here in Boca Raton and our surrounding communities.

It was Job who said, “Wisdom is with the aged, and understanding in length of days” (Job 12:12 ESV). Knowing that and the value God places on wisdom (Proverbs 3:15 says, “nothing you desire can compare with her”) I’ll take “1 Snr Coffee” any day.

Anyone want to ride to McDonalds’?

I saw excellence yesterday!

I am making a second pass through Team Of Rivals, the fascinating biography of Abraham Lincoln. I use this lengthy tome in a doctoral seminar I teach for Capital Seminary & Graduate School. The subject is teams, the location is the nation’s capital, the individuals in the spotlight are Lincoln and his cabinet. Fitting I think!

In her introduction to Team Of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin writes:

For better than 30 years, as a working historian, I have written on leaders I knew, such as Lyndon Johnson, and interviewed intimates of the Kennedy family and many who knew Franklin Roosevelt, a leader perhaps as indispensable in his ways as was Lincoln to the social and political direction of the country. After living with the subject of Abraham Lincoln for a decade, however, reading what he himself wrote and what hundreds of others have written about him, following the arc of his ambition, and assessing the inevitable mixture of human foibles and strengths that made up his temperament, after watching him deal with the terrible deprivations of his childhood, the deaths of his children, and the horror that engulfed the entire nation, I find that after newly two centuries, the uniquely American story of Abraham Lincoln has an unequalled power to captivate the imagination and to inspire emotion.

It was that line about living with the subject for a decade that arrested my attention — again. When I first read the book I had written, “WOW” in the margin.

I am listening to the biography on my morning walks, so I bookmark highlights in order to return to the words on my paper copy in my office at home. Working my way through 750 pages (40 hours of listening pleasure) I am inclined to congratulate myself for making a second pass — until I think about what Goodwin has done. She studied Lincoln for a decade, read his papers, and “what hundreds of others [had] written about him.” Now that is impressive. Goodwin’s efforts also brought to mind God’s words in Proverbs:

In all toil there is profit, but mere talk tends only to poverty. Proverbs 14:23 ESV

Do you see a man skillful in his work? He will stand before kings; he will not stand before obscure men. Proverbs 22:29 ESV

God reminds me that excellence comes at the end of the long road of hard work. Knowing that and then seeing both the picture and fruit of such efforts in the pages of Goodwin’s biography, I am motivate to “get after it.”

Not so fast tiger!

Last night Shannan and I were listening to an interview with Paul David Tripp on Family Life Today (click here to listen). As one who appreciates the need for strenuous effort and who loves the challenges and fruit of such endeavors, I needed to hear Tripp. He reminded me (thank you Shannan for lovingly encouraging me to listen to this) that it is all for naught if it comes at the expense of — or to the exclusion of — my walk with God or living in His fullness with my family and others.

Life is lived in tension. The efforts for excellence always checked by a stronger pull, an ambition that is  submitted to and longing for God and his glory.

That is excellence indeed.

For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen. Romans 11:36 ESV

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“For better than thirty years …” from Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin. New York: Simon & Schuster. 2005. Page xix.