Many people make New Years resolutions, but soon quit. Rather than making empty resolutions, try to bring a spiritual dynamic into your New Year’s focus. Try to be more obedient to God than every before. Here a three practical steps to do that this year:
Seek alignment with God.
Search your heart and ask yourself: What are the major areas of your life that are not aligned with God’s will? If you ask God to align your life with his will, you’ll find that an aligned life is a blessed life.
Set some goals.
Take a few minutes to put together goals for the New Year, considering these six basic dimensions of life.
- Health and Mental
- Family
- Financial and Business
- Educational
- Social
- Spiritual
Map out a strategy to accomplish goals in each of these six areas so your life is balanced in the coming year.
Lighten your load.
Think about what things you need to give up so that your life is less hectic and has more fun built in. What are some things you really enjoy? When will you do those things this year? Make sure you have some fun. Loosen up a bit.
Bring these three practical steps before God and ask for his help. He will help us accomplish goals in life that are aligned with him.
Discussion Questions:
- Watch the video together or invite someone to summarize the topic.
- What is your initial reaction to this video? Do you disagree with any of it? What jumped out at you?
- Do you typically make New Year’s resolutions? Why or why not?
- Why do you think seeking alignment with God’s will is the first step?
- Give an example of a time you made a life change to align more fully with God?
- When it comes to setting goals for the year, what areas would you add or subtract from Dr. Ireland’s six dimensions of life, and why?
- What is the difference between a goal and a New Year’s resolution?
- Why does it make sense to lighten your load this year? Why is that hard to do?
- What do you do for enjoyment? When will you find time to do that this year?
- Write a personal action step based on this conversation.
