Happy New Year! Can you believe it’s 2024 already? I’m sure you’ve either asked or heard that question a time or two already during these first days of January. Well, have you made a resolution to keep for this year? Better question, are you still on track and motivated to keep your resolution? I hope so! New Year’s resolutions are popular because the start of a new year can represent a fresh start. And who doesn’t need a fresh start in some area of life? Typically, New Year’s resolutions are made in order to improve a certain aspect of your life. According to an article in USA Today last January, the 3 most common resolutions for this past year all had to do with improving health. They were (in order from most popular): exercise more, eat healthier, and lose weight. More than any other time of year, people are motivated to improve their health. These are all certainly worthwhile goals for New Year’s resolutions. In fact, I may or may not have made all 3 of these resolutions personally for 2024! Goal setting or New Year’s resolutions can be good and provide needed motivation for personal development.
While so many of these kinds of goals or resolutions are related to physical health, and rightfully so, have you ever thought about setting goals or making resolutions that are spiritual in nature? We often look at ourselves in the mirror and determine that some lifestyle changes are needed to improve our physical condition. In the same way, it is good for us to reflect on our spiritual condition so that we can consider what changes might be in order to improve our spiritual health. Let’s remember the 2 most common New Year’s resolutions: exercise more and eat healthier. What if we associated our need to exercise with our need to pray, our spiritual exercise (Philippians 4:6) or our need to eat healthier with our need to read the Bible, our spiritual food (Matthew 4:4)? Spending time with God is critical for our spiritual health and growth. But, just like getting into a good exercise routine and eating healthier both require discipline, developing your prayer life and reading the Word of God also requires discipline. You start by developing a plan. And the plan starts with protecting some time each day for your time with God. Before you stop reading, I don’t mean you should start with an hour a day. If you’re not a runner, but you want to run, you don’t go out and try to run a 5K on the first day. If that’s your plan, you might not get yourself up for day 2! Instead, you go out and try to run for 5 minutes and build yourself up from there. In the same way, if you’re starting from zero, begin by spending a few minutes with the Lord each day. You can start by reading a chapter a day of one of the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John) and then use the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13) as a template for your prayer time. You don’t need fancy words. Just speak to God about what He lays on your heart. You can even pray through the Scripture that you just read.
We can be disciplined for what we believe is important. If you start small and develop some consistency, I’m confident that you will become more comfortable speaking to God and listening for His voice as you read His Word. It is incredible to realize that the God of the Universe actually desires to be in relationship with us. He has and continues to pursue a reconciled relationship with us through His Son, Jesus. Let’s reciprocate that pursuit for relationship by faith in Jesus and by spending some time with Him each day. Imagine the spiritual gains that are ahead of you!
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