THE BEGINNING TO ANOTHER YEAR

          Welcome to another January!

          A happy time for many of us to try new things in our year resolutions.

Another year to better ourselves.

I think most people look forward to the new year. It’s a time where people can start again, because usually the year before didn’t turn out how they wished. So, they try to make new goals for their life at the beginning of a new year. And honestly most of us suck at making new goals for our life. Why? Because we get dreamy eyed about the future that we stick unrealistic goals on paper to struggle through the year in hopes to accomplish our year goals.

I say all this for one reason. I get so frustrated at my own unrealistic goals that I wonder what’s the point. Now don’t get me wrong I think things such as lent, new year’s resolutions and so forth are good. It’s good to want to better ourselves. We must seek to work harder at realistic goals so that we do not say to ourselves, “the year 2016 was a terrible year, and I’m hoping that 2017 is better.” Yes, that’s right, I’m talking about almost 90% of Americans on social media saying that their year sucked in 2016.

I stopped creating new year’s resolutions for myself a while ago, because I simply never accomplished them. I would try which is good. But I became frustrated with setting up a goal that I never finished. Just recently I found a new way to help me create realistic goals and even if I failed this was still a sure-fire way to live my life for God in my new year’s resolution.

What happened?

I read a daily devotional by Nancy Leigh DeMoss. In the devotional Nancy created a realistic acronym for the word PRIORITIES. This acronym, if you followed through, would help you set realistic priorities for each and every year. So, with each resolution I would make I would make sure it was realistic and make sure it fit in my priorities of everyday life.

The Acronym goes…

"P – Pray-always (happy sad, or in need) Pray

R – Review Gods priorities for my life

I – Inventory how I’m using my time

O – Ordering my schedule according to God’s plan for my life

R – Resist seemingly urgent demands that threaten to derail me from what is truly important

I – seek Input from others to help determine God’s priorities for various seasons in my life

T – Take advantage of the time God gives you

I – Identify the “little foxes” that rob you of time, margin, and spiritual vitality

E – Experience each moment and season to its absolute fullest

S – Stay sensitive and fully surrendered to God”

Doing all of these steps I felt like I was able to create goals for my life and as long as they fit into the will of God they would and have become realistic goals.

Why share this with you all? Because maybe you’re in the same boat as me. Trying to set realistic goals in your life and follow through with those goals. You know what I mean right? Instead of creating something unrealistic for the year, you find yourself one month into the year not following through with the goals you created 30 days ago, Yeah, I think we’ve all been there.

All this to say, creating priorities that fit into our plan and Gods plan is important. If we leave God out of our weight loss plan for the year or our plan to try rock climbing this year, we already set ourselves up for failure.

So, here’s to a new year of making sure God is a part of all the PRIORITIES we might make for ourselves this year and every year.

Cheers and may Gods plan be even better than our own!

God is good my friends!