We do it every year, set out with very good intentions on January 1 of stopping smoking or drinking and eating too much or of starting to get fit or take up a new hobby – and after a couple of weeks they’re forgotten and we’re back in the same old routine again.

There is a danger that we can get like that in our relationship with God and in an attempt to personalise a resolve to live a more Christian life, John Wesley, in 1748, drew on earlier Puritan material to develop an annual covenant service ‘for the people called Methodists’.

Such a service is still held annually in Methodist churches around the world and indeed other Christian traditions have adopted such services.

The notion of covenanting with God is not new, indeed God laid down the very first covenants, or agreements, which would set out how we should be his people and he our God.

Recognising that the Old Covenant (or Testament) was not working, God brought in a New Covenant which included forgiveness rather than punishment for sin; and rather than relying on a written covenant he brought it to life in the person of Jesus Christ who showed the people, and us, how to live a covenant in relationship with God. He summarised it very well as ‘Love God, love your neighbour’.

Today’s Methodist covenant service reflects that command with words like: ‘I am no longer my own but yours; your will, not mine be done in all things; I willingly offer all I have and am to serve you as and where you choose’.

These are not easy commitments to make and there are some in the Church who hesitate before saying the words.

But it is important to remember that a covenant, like any other agreement or contract, needs two willing parties and each must offer something in return for what the other offers. God has covenanted to forgive our sins and remember them no more and to love us unconditionally: that means whether we can say the words or not.

If we who profess to be Christians honoured our side of the Covenant, by truly loving God and our neighbour in this year of Hope 2008, what a different place our town would be. Surely that’s something to make a new year’s resolution about isn’t it?