I love the new year.
Each January brings a new calendar and a fresh reason to reflect on the past and hope for the future. It’s a chance to take a deep breath, reset and prayerfully enter a new year.
Usually this means setting new goals and making new resolutions. But this year I want to encourage you to try something different. Something that goes much deeper.
Let’s call it a will audit.
A web of wills
Our world is an infinite web of wills vying for our lives.
Political parties want our unfettered allegiance and votes. Corporations desire our budgets to go their direction. A host of beloved friends and families posses their own wants and desires whom we hate to let down.
And running through all of these competing outside wills we have our very selves.
We have our own hopes, dreams, goals, and struggles. And we can hardly keep these straight. More often than not, we find ourselves joining with the Apostle Paul’s lament.
“For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.” (Romans 7:18-19 NIV).
The will of Jesus
Jesus was no stranger to living in a world saddled with opposing wills.
His disciples wanted to follow Him, the crowds wanted to learn from Him, many sought healing from Him, and the religious authorities willed nothing less than the death of Him.
But Jesus was clear—there was only one will He sought.
“I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me.” (Matthew 5: 30).
Jesus Christ, who has all power in heaven and earth and has an army of angels at hand, doesn’t just walk around doing whatever He wants. He doesn’t strut through Nazareth doing whatever seems most pleasing to do at any given moment or bending to the desires of the world He inhabited.
No.
He lives his life by yielding to His Father’s will in every moment and circumstance. Every act of His earthly incarnation was spent in pursuing the plan and will of His Father.
Whose will are we seeking?
This begs a few questions for those who are followers of Jesus.
Whose will are we seeking?
Whose will have we been seeking?
In this new year year, I invite you to prayerfully reflect on these questions. Set some time aside to discern your driving motivations from this past year in order to reorient yourself for this new year. Ask the Lord for grace to view yourself rightly and wisdom to realign your will with the Father’s.
Jesus always sought His Father’s will so let’s start 2022 by taking time audit our wills and join Christ in seeking the will of our Father too.