The Journey Continues: Going into the New Year: 2022
My guest columnist this week is Brother A.D. Dillard, a brother in Christ and a good friend.
Many people have made or are making New Year’s resolutions only to break them before the end of January. They have good intentions but are attempting to make personal change without divine guidance. The only way to solve any problem is to first admit there is a problem, discover the root cause of the problem and finally eliminate the root cause. If one is suffering from high blood pressure and they desire to gain control and get their blood pressure to normal levels, then they must admit it is high and find out what is causing it. They may be overweight, they might smoke and they may be under a great deal of stress. These are all contributing factors, but what is the root cause? They are overweight because they overeat and they do not exercise. They do not exercise because they have poor stamina due to smoking and being overweight. They smoke and binge eat to deal with the stress they are under. What then is the root cause? It might be that they are worried about things over which they have no control, allowing these things to spiral out of control.
Christ’s model for stress management is found in Matthew 6. 24-34: When Christ warns us to “Take no Thought” for food and clothes, he is saying “Do not worry.” He instructs us to, “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness; and all these things will be added unto you.” We need to mature our Spiritual selves by submitting and committing to the Christ model for life which is looking for and achieving God likeness, and God will take care of our physical requirements. Jesus warns us in this 2000-yearold periscope what science has recently confirmed, that “stress kills.” Perhaps my analogy appears to be an oversimplification, but at its core it is a biblicallysound application of a Christian principle. Instead of making a New Year’s resolution only to break it, I encourage the reader to make a daily commitment to seek to live in Christ likeness. Strive for three things: Love the Lord your God, love your neighbor and study the Word of God to find out how to go about it.
If I truly love God, I must love you. I may not like your political perspective, your style of dress, your style of worship or even your approach to life, but I can still love you. I will help you where I can, in ways that I can, respecting your choice or need to be different, while appreciating our differences where we are absent choice. I am blessed with 38 years of marriage to my loving wife, Brenda, and we have four children and fivegrandchildren. I accepted a call to preach the gospel in 1971 at 16. After 24 years of service to our country through the United States Air Force, God blessed me to work at and retire from the University of Texas at San Antonio with 20 years of service after working only 15. I have been blessed to serve as Pastor of the First Baptist Church NBC, San Marcos for 19 years.
In closing, I will commend to you my life scripture of Romans, 8:38-39: (38) “For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, (39) Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
