Thinking about a new year

 

Here we are on the eve of a new year.  I'm not sure how 2023 flew past as it did, but it's gone.  In place of a Sunday Scripture for today, I thought I'd just share a little about spiritual goals for 2024.

New Year's is when we typically consider goals or resolutions for the coming year.  I prefer goals, personally.  It seems to me that resolutions can easily be broken (and discarded), but a goal is something you can keep working at even if you fall a little short of it at times.  Even if you don't fully realize a goal, you make progress toward it.  When I set goals for a new year, spiritual goals are always included, along with physical and relational ones. 

One important thought to keep in mind with goals for any new year is that, as Hannah Wilwerding so eloquently pointed out on her Instagram account Her Biblical Worldview, 2024 is not our year.  It's God's year.  As she wrote, "Just like every year is God's year.  He just allows you to be a part of it.  He holds our goals.  He guides our footsteps.  He establishes our plans.  He directs our lives.  May this be the year we serve God over serving ourselves."

Our former pastor of many years always taught us (and very accurately, too) that there is no standing still in the Christian life.  We're either moving forward or we're moving backward.  That has always stuck with me through the years and I have seen it proved true over and over.  

So aiming for ongoing spiritual growth is very, very important and I find the start of a new year to be the perfect time to make a plan for it.  As the old saying goes, if you aim at nothing, you'll hit it every time.  So in every area of life, I try to aim at something, no matter how small it may seem.

I haven't fully formulated my spiritual goals for the coming year, but a friend and I are working on memorizing the book of James,  so learning chapters 2 through 5 will be one.  I read through the Bible last year, but this year I am planning to work my way through Charles Swindoll's Growing Strong in the Seasons of Life.  So that's another.  And I've begun the Bible study Stand Firm, concerning the armor of God, so there's one more.

May I encourage you to aim for greater spiritual growth in the New Year?  You will not regret having done so.

(My dear friend Vee, now with the Lord she loved so well, added the following when I wrote a similar post on my Kitchen Table blog last year: 

"He is the vine, we are the branches.  He is our source.  We can no more gain spiritual growth without Him than we could will ourselves into life itself.   He Who began a good work in you is able to complete it. Philippians 1:6".

And she was absolutely right.  There is no way we can have spiritual growth -- no way we will even have a desire for it -- without a relationship with our Lord and Savior.)

Happy New Year, friends!