Beginning a New Year Well

Well, let me welcome you to this new series of podcasts. I am very grateful to Ligonier Ministries for giving me the privilege of hosting this new series, and I hope you’ll be able to join me each week, Monday through Friday, as we explore all kinds of topics and different themes that I think are important to us in living the Christian life.

But first of all, let me be one of the very first voices to issue a blessed and Happy New Year. That’s going to be our theme this week: a Happy New Year. When I was a student, I went one New Year’s Day to take part in a service in a Methodist church in a fishing village in the northeast of Scotland. I didn’t know enough about the Methodist tradition to appreciate that actually it was a rather special service. And although I, and probably they, have completely forgotten what I preached on, the service left an indelible impression on me because it was the church’s annual New Year covenant renewal service. And after the sermon, the whole congregation in unison committed themselves afresh to the Lord in the words of a very personal and moving covenant.

I was quite surprised actually because I associated covenant theology with Presbyterians and the Reformed tradition and the Puritans and not the Methodists—and certainly not the Wesley brothers. But in fact, John Wesley had borrowed the idea of a living covenant from some of the Puritans that he had read at an earlier stage in his life. Anyway, it deeply impressed me, and I wanted to introduce it to the churches I served later on.

Occasionally, I found people objecting to the fact that it wasn’t really sincere to commit themselves to the Lord using someone else’s words—which, to be honest, slightly amused me because I watched them heartily every Lord’s Day, morning and evening, singing other people’s words of commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ. But the vast majority of us, I think, found it very helpful. And I personally found it deeply moving to join with people I loved and to whom I was committed as we committed ourselves afresh to the Lord for another year.

So, I want to begin this new year by sharing that covenant with you, and to invite you, with me, to commit yourself to the Lord and to pray for His help through this new year.

I am no longer my own, but Yours. Put me to what You will, place me with whom You will. Put me to doing, put me to suffering. Let me be employed for You or laid aside for You, exalted for You or brought low for You. Let me be full, let me be empty. Let me have all things, let me have nothing. I freely and heartily yield all things to Your pleasure and disposal. And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, You are mine, and I am Yours. May it be so. And may the covenant which I have just made here on earth be confirmed in heaven.

I hope you want to say “amen and amen.”