Five Goals for the New Year

Pray More

God desires that we offer several types of prayer, including prayers of adoration, thanksgiving, confession, and supplication (prayers for others and ourselves). A balanced prayer plan for the new year should include each area (A.C.T.S.) of prayer.

1. Adoration: Read a Psalm a day and give praise to God from the prompts found in the Psalm.

2. Thanksgiving: Make a list of ten things you are thankful for each day. These can be for answered prayer, kind acts of people toward you, or kind acts from God (sunsets, “coincidences,” discoveries, and much more). Keep these in a small journal which will be reviewed the day before Thanksgiving.

3. Confession: Each day I need to check my behavior several times. A good way to do this is each time I get in the car I can ask if I have spoken unkindly, taken advantage of things I should have shared with other people, promoted myself more than I should have, or forgotten to praise the Lord for something in front of others.

4. Supplication: I need to make lists which I will check regularly. These include a prayer list of ongoing needs, relatives, leaders (including national leaders, those who guide me at work, or those who guide the people I care for), and friends (besides actual friends who you spend time with in person or talking to on the phone, you can pray through your friends on Facebook and other social media lists), and neighbors (those who live in your neighborhood and your community). Set a day when you will pray for each group and keep lists as necessary.

Read the Bible every day

Set one or two times and places where you will read your Bible.

1. The first could be in the morning before you get out of bed as you read a Psalm in order to prompt prayers of adoration and praise.
2. The second time of scripture reading will be determined by your daily schedule. You can also jot down a reading plan which will promote balanced Bible reading. Rather than Bible snippets or tweets I will read an entire chapter or section of the Bible daily.
3. You can read other passages as they are shared with you or as they come to mind every day.

Advance your work

Many people have jobs. A job can be paid or life callings (such as parenting) which are performed without pay. A new year offers a great time to review goals and accomplishments in each job. Make a list of jobs in which you are involved. Place on this list things which need to be accomplished in 2017. What were your accomplishments and failures in 2016? Place on your list how you will build on these or fix these in 2017. Set some timetables and check-up points through the year.

Exercise

The Bible says our bodies are the Temple of the Holy Spirit. We need to take care of ourselves. I need to enforce several areas of personal care including eating correctly and a daily exercise plan. Sometimes this means doing things I hate (like calisthenics first thing in the morning, drinking more water).

Do Good for Others

Speak kind words daily and spread good deeds weekly. At least once a week during the new year, plan how you can share good beyond words in our world. This can include visiting the elderly (especially shut-ins or nursing homes), baking and taking cookies to neighbors, serving in your church, writing notes of encouragement (and sending by old fashioned postal mail), mentoring someone (perhaps younger than you), joining a co-worker to help them in a difficult project, raking leaves for a neighbor, paying it forward for a random person, or a multitude of other “good deeds.”