Resolving the New Year

Do you make New Years Resolutions? I don’t either. I set goals. Workable goals. Goals that are not made of dreams but are made of truths. Goals that can be accomplished not by imagination but by hard work. That means I have to “do” something, not imagine what it would be like.

My pastor gave a great message this last Sunday about setting our New Year’s goals. He encouraged us to set goals in three ways.

• resolve to grow spiritually
• resolve to grow relationally
• resolve to gain wisdom

I have taken his challenge and have set for myself goals that are completely attainable. There may be more but these are the ones that have come to mind. This list may be amended later. As of now, here are my 2013 New Year’s Goals

Relational

• No more Facebook drama – I don’t usually have this problem. I do well to cut out all drama but I need to make some adjustments. I love the “Don’t Show in Feed” option. I will be making more use of that. I’m also tired of those who can’t be serious and everything I post they have to make a joke out of it. I will be making more use of the “delete comment” option. I typically ignore them and that suits me fine but it’s gotten to the point to where if it’s not conducive to the conversation, they’ll find their comment missing.
• Fellowship Friday – My wife and I were Young Adult ministry and we read a book how to double our ministry. One of the suggestions was to set aside Friday nights for Jesus. What it really means was to invite someone over your house each Friday with no “church” agenda but only to build relationship. By doing this our ministry grew from 3 to thirty in two years. I’d say it worked. We’re gonna try hard to do this again in hopes that our church will grow leaps and bounds. Doing it before, we watched every couple we had dinner with go into leadership. Let’s see that happen again.

Wisdom

• Connect with other leaders – Simply what it means. I want to connect with other leaders that I may glean from their wisdom. I hope to meet with them in oder to coax them into sharing with me what they have learned. The process has already started and I hope to continue it.
• Read for quality instead of quantity – The last two years I have set goals to read a billion books and have blown my goal out of the water. unfortunately, this created a separate set of issues. Instead of feeling like I’m not reading enough, now I feel like I’m not absorbing enough. It was a trade-off. So next year I’m resolving to read less and consume more.

Spiritually

• Read more Bible – Along the same lines as the last one, each month I make a list of books I read. I’m resolving to make one of those entries a book of the bible. In hope of reading my bible more because I felt guilty that I read almost 50 books last year but I’m not sure I read my bible all that much. So I will read at least one book of the bible each month.
• Pray Intentionally – In two ways will I pray intentionally. When asked t0 pray about something, you better bet we’ll do it right then and there. Also I will be more intentional about praying for certain things and people. I also intend to learn how to pray better. That means learning how to communicate better with my heavenly father. No more fluff or empty prayers.
• Pastor better – I’m learning how to be a better pastor. One way I know I can do this is to grow in love towards others. This simply means, accepting the difference of others, respecting who others are that I’m not, appreciating what others bring to the table, and serving my church in anyway that I can that they may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Personally

• Lose Weight –  No I’m not jumping on the New Year’s bandwagon to lose weight. I started last June and lost 20 lb.  I hope to lose 20 more. So I will continue to do what has been successful for me to lose weight. Just keepin on keepin on.
• Be Ok with me – I’ve dealt with image issues my whole life. Ever since wanting to be like my older brothers at thirteen years old, to wanting to be a rock star at twenty-one years old, from wanting to be a worship leader like Chris Tomlin to wanting to be able to speak and connect like my pastor. I’ve always wanted to be somebody else. I need to learn to be me, who God created me to be. This is the year that I take that to a new level.