With the end of the year coming tomorrow I feel as probably so many others do a sense of reflection and conviction on all the opportunities I passed up this year. All the choices I made or the plans that I did not keep. Every decision placed under a microscope seeing as everything that I had wished to do in 2014 is now sadly out of time.

While doing my devotional I came across a quote by Tertullian II; “Fit, non nascitur, Christianus” (The Christian is made such, not born such)

What the heck does this have to do with New Years and all the resolutions that I placed on a shelf and waved at as I lived my life? Well one thing that I say every year is that I’m going to grow closer with Christ. Every year. (ok maybe not my rebellious years in high school but you get the point) But it’s not that I have not developed in my walk with Christ. It’s that I get discouraged when I falter in what I am trying to accomplish and eventually on the shelf it goes.  But what I need to do is have patience with myself and supply myself with Grace. Rome was not built in a day and neither is an unbroken companionship with God (thank you Lysa Terkeurst for the beautiful picture you paint in your book “The Best Yes” )

We are not born Christian and we are not born perfect. That is the whole concept of sin and the fall of man. We are sinful creatures that are unable to fix ourselves. So Christians as Tertullian II said, are made. We are shaped through blood, sweat, and tears. We cannot say a magic prayer and BOOM unbroken companionship with God without any more effort on our parts. We have to work at it. We have to make time for it. We have to push ourselves out of our sinful nature and into the strange feeling of pursuing a God who has never stopped pursuing us.

So on this New Years Eve Eve I ask that we all give ourselves a little grace. That we allow ourselves some patience and another chance at reaching the goals that we sometimes feel our a little to high. That we pull out that trampoline and give it one last go (and then another and another) and that we never give up because whatever your goal is, is worth every ounce of fight you have.