Early 20th-century New Year's resolution postcards
I've made New Year's Resolutions for seventy years and wish I could remeber them all.
All were fleeting, but their focus changed as I grew older.
Age 6-26 focused on games, sports, and girls.
Ages 26- 50 were about love, career, and family.
Ages 51-75 focused on health, writing, faith, and retirement.
For 2025 i am renewing these from 2005 (age 59).
Let's begin with an ancient one from St. Paul* (5-62). An asterisk after a name means the person is in SPIRITUAL LIVES
According to my earnest expectation and my hope, in nothing I shall be ashamed, but with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life, or by death. Philippians 1:20
1. To make a complete, Total, permanent, absolute, and irrevocable surrender of my will To God.
2. To be absolutely and entirely for Him and Him alone.
3. To love and honor my wife above all other people, laying down, if necessary, my life for her.
4. To be a godly and active father to my son Jonathan and my daughter Patricia and pray that in my life, they may see Jesus shine.
5. To love the rest of my extended family with all my heart and will work for them and their eternal good in every way the Lord shows me.
6. To begin each day in the presence of the Lord, searching His Word and praying for His presence and headship throughout the day.
7. To seek God’s gift of grace and gentleness in my life and to eek humble obedience To His will.
8. To commit my writing and vocation to God and His glory.
9. To eat, drink, and exercise to maintain this bodily temple of the Lord.
10. To seek to be pure in heart and to be holy as God is Holy.
These ten resolutions are mere additions to these two:
“Resolution One: I will live for God.
Resolution Two: If no one else does, I still will.”
― Jonathan Edwards* (1703-1758)
Holy Father in heaven, I cannot even hope to persevere until the end without Thy Grace. Father, wash me over again in the precious blood of Jesus that cleanseth us from all iniquity.
Forgive me my sins, Father, and give me a hunger and thirst for righteousness. Fill me with Thy Holy Spirit so that rivers of living water may flow from within me to those whose lives I touch.
Baptize me in Thy Love, Holy Father, that out of my life Jesus may shine. Above all, Father, give me a heart like Thine! Make me, like David, a man after God’s own heart.
All this I ask in the precious name of Jesus Christ, my Savior, in whose name I come boldly to the throne of grace, where I may obtain mercy and find grace in time of need. Amen and Amen.
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I am resolved no longer to linger,
charmed by the world's delight;
things that are higher, things that are nobler,
these have allured my sight.
Refrain:
I will hasten to Him,
hasten so glad and free;
Jesus, greatest, highest,
I will come to Thee.
2 I am resolved to go to the Savior,
leaving my sin and strife;
He is the true one, He is the just one,
He has the words of life. [Refrain]
3 I am resolved, and who will go with me?
Come, friends, without delay;
taught by the Bible, led by the Spirit,
we'll walk the heavenly way. [Refrain]
Palmer Hartsough USA 1844-1932.
Living for Jesus
Living for Jesus a life that is true,
Striving to please Him in all that I do;
Yielding allegiance, glad-hearted and free,
This is the pathway of blessing for me.
O Jesus, Lord and Savior,
I give myself to Thee,
For Thou, in Thine atonement
Didst give Thyself for me;
I own no other Master,
My heart shall be Thy throne,
My life I give, henceforth to live,
O Christ, for Thee alone.
Living for Jesus who died in my place,
Bearing on Calv’ry my sin and disgrace;
Such love constrains me to answer His call,
Follow His leading and give Him my all.
Living for Jesus wherever I am,
Doing each duty in His holy name;
Willing to suffer affliction and loss,
Deeming each trial a part of my cross.
Living for Jesus through earth’s little while,
My dearest treasure, the light of His smile;
Seeking the lost ones He died to redeem,
Bringing the weary to find rest in Him.
Thomas Obediah Chisholm (1895-1963), 1917
We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed;
Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.
For we which live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh. St. Paul* (5-67) in 2 Corinthians 4:8-11
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