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Weekly Action - 8 January 2025 - New Year Resolutions

Take action to do a mini spiritual review, and see how you are doing on your journey of discipleship this New Year.

 

New Year resolutions

This week Arise’s weekly actions and blogs resume after the Christmas and New Year break.  The start of a New Year is often the time when people look at their lives and make resolutions about things to change and improve in the year ahead.  A week into January and already many of those resolutions won’t have lasted.  But whilst it is easy to be cynical, for us as Christians, using the New Year as an opportunity to pause, reflect and do a quick spiritual health check on where we are at in our discipleship walk with God is not a bad idea. 

As Christians our life and walk is all about discipleship, following Jesus in our daily lives and being slowly transformed to become more and more like him, so that we might “live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way; bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God” (Col 1: 10).  In the Arise Manifesto (Arise’s big picture, researched, Biblical, holistic and practical vision for a better world), we see how the Bible teaches us that the mission of the church, and every individual Christian, is to gradually transform the world around us through evangelism, discipleship, fighting social injustice, eliminating poverty and restoring the environment.

This week, will you take the opportunity to pause and do a quick spiritual health check on where you are at in your discipleship walk with God?  The Bible provides us with amazingly practical habits, behaviours and guidance to help us grow ever closer to God and ever deeper in our journey of discipleship.  These might be ensuring we have a daily prayer time, attending church regularly, giving generously, helping those in need in our communities in practical ways, sharing our faith with our friends and family, or advocating on behalf of those who are suffering injustice.

In the Arise Manifesto, we have drawn these together into a summary list of specific actions in areas like prayer; obedience, calling and direction; personal attitude and integrity; evangelism; work, rest and health; family life; church life; the work of the Holy Spirit; spiritual warfare and persecution; social justice; development and the environment.  This puts these specific practical actions and behaviours, that should be a part of our lives as Christians, all in one place, and allows us to compare them against our current lifestyle to see how we are doing.  This might sound slightly overwhelming, but just try it.  It doesn’t take long.  Pray through it as you go.  You may find that on many, you are doing well already.  On some others, you may find God challenging you to take action and go further. 

 

Take Action

Practical Action
Go through the specific actions we should take as individual Christians in the boxes at the end of each section in Parts 2 and 3 of the Arise Manifesto, or look at the summaries in the Appendix, and see how you are doing on each action.

Pray
Pray through it as you go.  You will find that on many, you are doing well already.  Well done.  On some others, you may find God challenging you to take action and go further.  Ask God to show you if there are one or two specific things he wants you to target and start taking action on in your life this week.

 

Find out more

Latest news – Updates on previous campaigns and latest news from the Arise movement.

Join a local Arise group in your church or area – It’s great to take this action as individual Christians, but even better to come together with others to pray, discuss, worship, learn, have fun and take action together.  Contact Arise if you are interested.

Arise Manifesto – Find out more about this week’s action in the Arise Manifesto, Arise’s big picture, researched, Biblical, holistic and practical vision for a better world. 

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