Have you given any thought to New Year's resolutions this year?

I used to be sceptical of them, but over the past few years, I've become more convinced of the value of making resolutions i.e. commitments to pursue specific personal goals. You may not achieve what you hoped, but if you aim at nothing, that's often what you achieve.

I wouldn't restrict such commitments just to a new calendar year. Instead, I'd encourage you to regularly take time to step back, and assess each aspect of your life (your spiritual life, your relationships, your work, your responsibilities, and patterns of life), and reflect (with the Lord) on how you might need to make adjustments.

As you're doing that, let me make one suggestion that might be helpful for your walk with God: establish a triplet with a couple of Christian friends.

Have you got a couple of friends you could commit to meeting regularly (either weekly or bi-weekly), who you'll commit to being honest with, sharing your struggles, confessing your sin, reminding each other of the gospel, and praying for each other?

I ask, partly because we're starting a Community Bible Reading plan as a church. You're still able to join the WhatsApp group if you'd like to (where we'll share weekly devotional content). You're welcome to follow along individually, but I think you'd get a lot out of forming a triplet with a couple of other folks. Alongside being honest with each other, you could reflect each week on what you've been reading and how you feel like God has been speaking to you through scripture.

I know some of us in London feel lonely. We cast about, asking, "who are my friends?". One of my main learnings about friendship as an adult is life is full of potential friends. It's simply a matter of who you commit time to. The more you regularly invest time in another person, the better friends you become. So, the question, for 2024, is who will you commit to?

Others of us feel like we have lots of relationships, but we haven't experienced deep, spiritual friendship like this. There's something incredibly special about choosing to be radically honest with a couple of people, and engaging with the hardest elements of your lives together.

So, whether you're doing CBR or not, I'd encourage you to find a couple of people (who you might not know so well to begin with), and commit, perhaps for a few months at first, to meeting regularly. If you're honest, and enter in, asking how can I encourage, pray and serve the other two, I'm pretty confident you'll find it immensely life-giving.