Have you made any New Year's resolutions? How are you doing at keeping them? Even if you don't believe in making resolutions, I'll bet you've got some goals in mind for the new year. They're probably for things like better health, losing weight, using your time better, making better financial decisions.
Do any of your goals include your spiritual life? This is the most important area of life for Christians. Yet we often drift along, doing what we think is expected of us, and rarely make goals in this area.
If you don't have any goals, may I suggest some? I've been memorizing Colossians 1:9-14. I realized that this passage in the NIV lists some great goals for the new year.
"For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins."
These verses tell us how to "please him [God] in every way." Let me summarize them:
1. Bearing fruit
2. Growing in our knowledge of God
3. Allowing him to strengthen us in endurance and patience
4. Joyfully giving thanks
Will you join me in making these goals for 2011?
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