Not My Own

Not My Own

A Covenant Renewal for a Post-Christian World
January 4, 2026

Luke 9:23-27

Jesus said to everyone, “All who want to come after me must say no to themselves, take up their cross daily, and follow me.  All who want to save their lives will lose them. But all who lose their lives because of me will save them.

~ Luke 9:23-24

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 Grace is free, but it will cost you everything.

This is the paradox of Christian discipleship.  Jesus calls us as we are.  We don’t earn God’s favor.  We don’t deserve to be called disciples.  Like the original twelve, we are simply not qualified for the task at hand.  And yet Jesus still says, “Come, follow me.”  This is grace.

But grace is never cheap.  Bonhoeffer reminds us, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die” (Cost of Discipleship).  The same Jesus who freely invites us into abundant life tells us to take up our cross, and to lose our life to find it.  In Luke 14, he even asks, “Who would begin anything without first counting the cost.”

In many ways, that’s exactly what a Covenant Renewal service helps us do.  Wesley adapted the covenant prayer from his parent’s Puritan tradition and encouraged the people called Methodists to pray it at the start of each new year as a way of remembering and renewing their baptismal covenant (umcdiscipleship.org).  It is a prayer of surrender like Jesus describes in Luke 9:23. In baptism, we renounce evil, repent of our sin, die to ourselves, and as Paul says, rise to walk in newness of life.  The Covenant Prayer simply names this truth again: our lives are not our own, we belong to Christ. 

At the same time, the original form of the prayer reflects Wesley’s own era and theological upbringing.  As UMC pastor Rev. Jeremy Smith notes, some lines lean toward a kind of determinism, as if God actively causes our suffering (i.e. “Put me to suffering”).  It becomes difficult to reconcile the God who heals with a God who first inflicts the disease.  Even worse, the idea that God caused the drunk driver or the school shooter to kill an innocent person out of some mysterious Divine plan would make God the author not only of suffering and evil, but of sin itself.  This cannot be.   

Yes, we surrender to God’s will for our lives, but that does not mean everything that happens is God’s will.  Sin and suffering are real.  God works to bring good out of even the worst situations, but I do not believe God causes our pain and suffering.  So, today we’ll pray Rev. Smith’s revised version of the covenant prayer.  He preserves the heart of self-surrender and submission, while rejecting the idea that suffering originates in God.  (You’ll find both the original and revised Covenant Prayer below).

One final word of caution: the covenant we renew today is not just another New Year’s resolution.  Resolutions depend on self-improvement and sheer determination.  Our covenant with God depends entirely on grace.  The Spirit actively produces good fruit in us.  We choose to take up our cross daily, but we depend entirely on God’s strength to live out this promise.

•  Where might God be asking you to surrender control this year so something new can take root?

• As you pray the covenant prayer, what feeing is stirring in you: resistance, hope, longing, fear, freedom… something else?

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Covenant Prayer (Original) *
John Wesley

I am no longer my own, but thine.
Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be employed by thee or laid aside for thee,
exalted for thee or brought low for thee.
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 thy pleasure and disposal.
And now, O glorious and blessed God,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
thou art mine, and I am thine. So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on earth,
let it be ratified in heaven. Amen.

* https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/blog/the-wesley-covenant-prayer-and-the-baptismal-covenant

Covenant Prayer (Paraphrase) *
Rev. Jeremy Smith

I am not my own self-made, self-reliant human being.
In truth, O God, I am Yours.
Make me into what You will.
Make me a neighbor with those whom You will.
Guide me on the easy path for You.
Guide me on the rocky road for You.
Whether I am to step up for You or step aside for You;
Whether I am to be lifted high for You or brought low for You;
Whether I become full or empty, with all things or with nothing;
I give all that I have and all that I am for You.
So be it.
And may I always remember that you, O God, and I belong to each other. Amen.

* https://hackingchristianity.net/2016/12/wesleys-covenant-prayer-in-a-post-christian-context.html

All Things New

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All Things New
Series: Happy Holy Days - Part 6
Ephesians 4:21-32; Isaiah 43:18-19; Mark 2:21-22

Don’t remember the prior things;
don’t ponder ancient history.
Look! I’m doing a new thing;
now it sprouts up; don’t you recognize it?
I’m making a way in the desert,
paths in the wilderness.

Isaiah 43:18-19 (CEB)

No one sews a piece of new, unshrunk cloth on old clothes; otherwise, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and makes a worse tear.  No one pours new wine into old leather wineskins; otherwise, the wine would burst the wineskins and the wine would be lost and the wineskins destroyed. But new wine is for new wineskins.”

 Mark 2:21-22 CEB)

Listen to this week’s sermon here:

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Happy New Year!

But wait, we’re still in the middle of the 12 days of Christmas.  Epiphany / Three Kings Day is later this week.  And if we want to be really technical, the Christian new year begins the first Sunday of Advent.

In some ways, New Year’s almost seems to short-circuit our Christmas celebrations, calling everyone to take down the decorations and move on.  But what if our New Year’s Celebrations could actually move us deeper into the celebration of Christmas instead of rushing us too quickly past the season?

Like the Winter Solstice, New Year’s celebrations are ancient traditions honored in cultures all around the globe.  The earliest recorded new year’s celebration occurred roughly 4,000 years ago in ancient Babylon.  For them, it occurred in mid-march when the crops were planted.  They held a 12 day religious festival known as Akitu, where they would reaffirm loyalty to their king, crown new kings, and make vows to the gods to pay back their debts and return anything they had borrowed.  If the Babylonians kept their word, they believed the gods would grant them favor in the new year.  Rome, Egypt, Persia, and China also have a rich ancient history of celebrating the New Year.

But what does any of this have to do with Christianity?  Technically, absolutely nothing.  New Year’s celebrations and even some of our traditions like new year’s resolutions date back long before Christian history.  Nevertheless, Christians have always been good at adapting cultural traditions, using them both to strengthen our own faith and to bear witness to the ways God is already showing up in the traditions of others, just as we have seen with the development of Christmas.

The idea of making rededicating our lives or renewing our covenants and promises which is part of nearly every new year’s tradition is also a central part of Christian practice.  The Christian life begins with repentance, remembering one’s past mistakes and committing or “resolving” to do better in the future.  In 1740, John Wesley developed this theme into a formal service of Covenant Renewal most commonly held on New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day.  Another form of Christian New Year’s celebration is the watch-night service, which includes scripture readings and hymn singing, offering a spiritual alternative to “ring in the new year” with prayer instead of partying. 

Research shows that nearly 45 percent of Americans make New Year’s resolutions, but only 8 percent are successful.  These resolutions or goals are generally more about self-improvement.  Perhaps its time to stop making empty promises to ourselves and take advantage of this day to renew our covenant with the one who can truly make our lives new.

On January 2, 2022, we used the traditional liturgy from the Wesleyan Covenant Renwal Service at Shiloh UMC in Granite Quarry. You can participate in that service online below.