2014 is now covered with the blood of Christ.

2015 now waits to be written.

What will your story be?

According to Twitter, the top aspirations and intentions people are sharing online include:

#1. Work out
#2. Be happy
#3. Lose weight
#4. Stop smoking
#5. Unplug

“Be happy” doubtless appeared on the first ever set of New Year resolutions carved in stone; it’s likely been on every list since then; and, presumably, it will also be on the last list ever to be written.

But how? How to be happy? Here are some hints.

Never cease to show your people that to be holy is to be happy; and that, to bring us to perfect holiness and likeness to God, was the very end for which Christ died. Andrew Bonar

For if sin is misery, sinners can only be made happy indeed by being made holy. The process of redemption, then, is one whose design throughout is holiness. Robert Dabney

There will three effects of nearness to Jesus, all beginning with the letter h—humility, happiness, and holiness. Charles Spurgeon

If the question be asked, why we should seek the good of mankind, the answer is, from a regard to our everlasting happiness; and if the question be, why we should make the will of God the rule of our conduct, the answer must be the same; So that really all virtue is resolved into a regard to our own happiness. Archibald Alexander

O that all the world but knew that holiness and happiness are one! O that all the world were one holy family, joyfully coming under the pure rules of the gospel! Andrew Bonar

They’re not hunger and thirst…hungering and thirsting after happiness. They’re hungering and thirsting after righteousness, that’s why they’re happy. John Macarthur

Authentic obedience comes when happiness and holiness meet such that holiness becomes the source of happiness rather than its alternative. Holiness is meant to ignite, not eliminate, joy. Dane Ortlund

I wish you all a very holy and, therefore, a very happy 2015.