Preaching the Gospel in 2011

I don't have a tradition of making New Year's Resolutions. Some years I make them, some years I don't and usually when I do I find they're always the same. I find I'm still needing the same things...a little more like Jesus today that yesterday; this year than last year.

This year is one of those resolution years. And the more I think about it, the more I like the idea of long-term goals: things I desire to see happen in my life by His grace.

For the past, probably 2 years, my friend Anna Leigh and I have been memorizing Scripture together. She lives in Georgia and I live in North Carolina, but we e-mail each other with our progress. I picked Psalm 103 first, so we worked on it for a few days and memorized some verses and then typed out what we'd worked on, from memory, and e-mailed it to each other. When we finished Psalm 103, then she picked Psalm 34 and then I picked Hebrews 11.

We were doing well (about half-way through) and then we both had lots of traveling or school or other things that got in the way and we weren't memorizing much. So about the beginning of December we came up with a plan. We decided that in 2011 we wanted to memorize a passage every month. There were a couple of reasons for this:

1) we weren't making much progress because we didn't have a deadline. You just don't memorize much Scripture when you have forever to do it in. And the intention is that we will memorize a lot of Scripture in our lifetimes, as the Lord gives life and breath.

2) we both wanted to have the same goal so that we were pushed to work in the same time slot and able to encourage the other to keep working.

We thought some of you might be encouraged to make memorizing Scripture part of your goals for 2011, either with our schedule or one of your own. And you are welcomed to e-mail me or Anna Leigh and send us your progress, or have another friend work on it with you. The desire is above all that "His Word might dwell richly within us."

Below is our plan for the year and then some links that I've enjoyed on memorizing Scripture and/or new year's resolutions/goals.

May the Lord richly bless His people this year and find us being abundantly faithful even in small things.

January - Hebrews 11
February - Psalm 139
March - Romans 6
April - Psalm 27
May - Romans 7
June - Philippians 2
July - Romans 8
August - Psalm 84
September - John 17
October - I Peter 1
November - Hebrews 12
December - Isaiah 53

Some helpful and inspiring blog posts over at A Holy Experience by Ann Voskamp on memorizing Scripture (especially this one).

I might even go ahead and work on her two verses a week plan this year. While I'm at this whole business of making this a year of setting a pattern of memorizing Scripture why not throw more wood on the fire.

(and for your encouragement, I find that in doing this thing called memorizing, it has to become a habit. I memorize while I'm getting ready in the morning and it becomes a habit, just like working out or driving to work every morning or brushing your teeth. If you force yourself to do it (and it's hard - very hard - at first), after a while it's odd feeling when you don't. So may I encourage you to make yourself memorize a verse or half a verse a day and keep pluggin' until it feels odd to leave your verses on the shelf in the morning. It's like the Gospel itself: we have to put it on like a costume until it begins to feel like it's part of us: who we are.)

A great set of New Year's Resolutions from Sunday morning's sermon at Redeemer.

These sermons by Pastor Ben Miller last January at Franklin Square OPC (I've been enjoying them again this week): parts one, two and three.

A link to Sermon Audio's Bible online. Sometimes it's helpful to download the chapter you're working on and listen to it over and over and over again. Sermon Audio is helping us out! Ah! Have I ever mentioned that Sermon Audio is my favorite website ever!

And of course, what would be a post on resolutions without a link to Jonathan Edwards' resolutions?

To Him be all of the glory!

Sarah