Beloved,
In between worship services last Sunday, my family hiked Guild Trail up to Sunset Rock. Though the distance is not far (roughly 2.5 miles), the incline is fit to wear you out. Tessa, Canon, Owen, and myself made the trek up, but it was too much for Vos’s little legs to handle. So he rode upon my shoulders for the majority of the hike. When we finally reached the top, Vos matter-of-factly stated from his regal position, “Dad, that was easier than I thought.”
My thighs were on fire. My shoulders were sore. My heart was racing. Though wearing nothing but a t-shirt on December 31, I was sweating. But here was Vos, enjoying the same breathtaking beauty atop Sunset Rock that I was, yet without the slightest weariness. He had been carried by another, enabling him to go where he couldn’t have gone and to enjoy what he couldn’t have enjoyed left to his own strength. Riding on Dad’s shoulders made the climb easier than he ever imagined it being.
This occasion has served as a parable for me as I’ve stepped into 2024. I have great aspirations, resolutions, and goals for the new year. I want to climb higher than ever before in knowing and reflecting God. I want to excel in godliness as a husband, father, and pastor. I want to cultivate and communicate an expanding hunger for Spirit-wrought, Christ-exalting, man-abasing revival via prayer and fasting. I want to seize upon the time, zealously writing, witnessing, and working for the extension of Christ’s kingdom. And I have a page of concrete goals to give direction as I seek to reach these heights. But like Vos looking up at Sunset Rock from the bottom of Guild Trail, I realize my spiritual legs can’t handle the ascent. If I depend upon my own strength, I will never reach the top.
Sometimes well-meaning Christians scoff at the idea of making resolutions. After all, who ends up keeping them? But resolutions are actually biblical. The problem is not resolutions (so long as they accord with God’s revealed will); the problem is trying to keep them in our own strength. That is why Paul prays “that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power” (2 Thes. 1:11). As Christians, we ought to resolve after good, but we ought to do so in prayerful dependence upon God to fulfill what we can’t fulfill in our own strength. We need God to carry us on His broad, omnipotent shoulders! In the words of Isaiah, “Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint” (Isa. 40:30-31).
In 2024, would you join me in leaning into your child-like weakness by mounting the strong shoulders of your fatherly God?
Image for a moment how joyous it will be to come to December and to look at how God has enabled you to grow and equipped you to serve as you think to yourself, “Wow, that was easier than I thought.” Of course, there is nothing easy about spiritual growth or spiritual service. The voice of my old taekwondo master rings true: “No pain, no gain!” But when we are working out what God is already working in (Phil. 2:12-13), it is certainly easier. The impossible becomes possible. The undoable becomes doable. We are able to make progress in our earthly pilgrimage without fainting.
Perhaps the funniest thing about Vos’s comment was his apparent oblivion to the fact that I had carried him almost the entire hike. He spoke as if he made the trek himself! Is it not true of us? Just reflect upon 2023. Are there ways you have grown spiritually, relationally, vocationally, or financially? Are their prevailing sins that have less of a grip upon you than they did at the beginning of the year? Are their goals or aspirations you acheived? It is only because of God in Christ, and don’t let your flesh tell you otherwise! It is from Him and through Him, and thus it is unto Him. That is why Paul’s reason for praying for the fulfillment of the good resolve of the Thessalonians is “so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you” (2 Thes. 1:12).
May we reach our desired heights in 2024 and respond by squeezing God around His anthropomorphic neck and whispering, “Father, I never would have made it had you not carried me. Thank you.”
Yours in Christ,
Pastor Nick
