The new year is coming upon us and with the new year comes new resolutions that everyone wants to accomplish. For most of us we seem to struggle to accomplish these resolutions that we make. Thankfully here are a few different blog posts that we found helpful that might give you some helpful tips to reflect, plan, and execute these resolutions in 2014. Enjoy!
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It's A Good Time To Remember, Reflect, and Resolve: Most of us can probably use a good dose of “considering our ways.” If you’re anything like me, you get overloaded and feel a persistent strain on your time, attention, and devotion to God. This strain can numb us and lead us to drift. And as D.A. Carson says, “we do not drift toward holiness.” If we don’t regularly take time to evaluate our heart, we can, often unknowingly, drift into sinful or sluggish patterns. To fight against this deadly drifting, it’s wise to draw near to Jesus and consider our ways. And while there’s nothing magical about doing this at the turn of the year, it does provide a natural opportunity to intentionally remember, reflect, and resolve with hopes that we will grow in deeper devotion to Christ.
Read The Whole Bible in 2014: Do you want to read the whole Bible? The average person reads 200 to 250 words per minute; there are about 775,000 words in the Bible; therefore it takes less than 10 minutes a day to read the whole Bible in a year.
Your Most Courageous Resolution for 2014: Resolutions are good things. They’re biblical: “may [God] fulfill every resolve for good” (2 Thessalonians 1:11). And I think developing New Year’s resolutions is a very good idea. A year is a defined timeframe long enough to make progress on difficult things and short enough to provide some incentive to keep moving. A resolve is not a vague intention, like “one of these days I’m going to get that garage cleaned” or “I’m going to read the Bible through this year,” but without any clear plan to do it. Resolves are intentions with strategies attached to them. You don’t just hope something is going to happen; you are planning to make it happen. To be resolved is to be determined.
Remember 2013 and Plan for 2014: Welcome to the day after Christmas! Each year between Christmas and New Years I walk through a simple exercise to help me think through the past year and plan for the coming year. I originally learned this exercise from David Allen, author of Getting Things Done, and have customized it over the years. My wife and I both walk through it, and I use it with those I coach as well. Allocating an hour or two over the next week to walk through this exercise will help you to start the new year well.
The Empty Shelf Challenge: Empty a shelf in your house somewhere. Every book you read from now until December 31, 2014 goes on the shelf. (Waiting until January 1st to do something awesome is stupid and fake.) At the end of the year, I guarantee you will have read more than you did in 2013. Best of all, you’re scientifically more likely to accomplish something when you have people working on it with you.