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Wednesday, December 29, 2010

New Year Goals Part Deux

ItalicPhoto from Thy Word Forever



I have been planning on making some changes in the upcoming year. Yesterday I gave three of my New Year's focuses, and I went into some detail about my plans to work on goal one which is weight loss. I am kind of taking steps with that one. Every month I will re-evaluate what I am doing so I can see what I need to tweak and what is working.


Today isn't about that though. Today I want to talk about goal number two. I do want to preface this by saying that goal number two is not number two in importance. It is simply a number.


2- God


I have thought and thought about how to put into words what my goal is. With weight loss you don't have to explain much. Someone says they want to lose weight, they don't have to go into too much detail about what that means. Let's face it, you can kind of see that for yourself. With someone's relationship with God it is different. Only we know where we are in our spiritual walk.

So let's see if I can kind of put this out there in a way that makes sense.
I basically want to refocus my energies on God. I want to refocus my relationship with God. It isn't like I do not have an active relationship with God. I pray and communicate with Jesus every day. Praying has never been an issue with me, but I want to go further.

I would love to say that I study my Bible daily, but the fact is that I read it, and sometimes I can read for quite some time, but many times, I just feel drowsy. This is not to say that I haven't read my Bible. I want to delight in His word. I want to be able to really read it and absorb it. I want to see things in a new light. I want to learn to not just read the word of God. I want to learn to study it. I don't want to just take a Bible study class. I want to be able to take out my Bible and go. Does that make sense?

Most of all, I want to use the gifts that God has given me. I also want to find out what those gifts are. My hope and prayer is that this coming year, I develop an even stronger prayer life, learn to really study His word, and get a good wake up call on my place in His kingdom.
My steps so far are the following:

1 - Prayer.

Like I said I pray. I always pray. I have seen God do amazing things in my life and in the lives of others. I know he moves. I just want to really increase my prayer life. To this end I am going to do two things this year. One is to start a prayer journal. Two is I will be reading the book
"The Power of Simple Prayer" How To Talk With God About Everything" by Joyce Meyer. I am not reading this book in order to learn how to pray. I just want to see what I can glean out of the prayer journal and this book. I have no time frame for reading the book. The prayer journal I intend to keep all year and write in each day. The book could take weeks or months to get through.

2 - Study of God's Word.

I figure that the best way to make this work for me is to focus on reading my Bible each day. I also intend to do a devotion a day (I have a wonderful Devotional from Proverbs 31 Ministries that I plan to use), and seeing where the devotion leads me in my study of the Bible. I also will be reading
"Becoming More Than A Good Bible Study Girl" by Lisa Terkeurst. This is a book that I do not plan on racing through. I want to get out of it everything that I can.

3 - Finding and developing the talents that God has given me to do His will.

Whether it be through praying for others or washing toilets. I don't care. I just want to know what it is. I cannot explain why I am not exactly sure of that. Let's just say I had kind of a flakey household, and talents were squelched and squelched often. That is fine. I don't need to go back there to get to know what God has planned for me. He'll show me, and I truly believe that by following the path that I am setting ahead, everything will be more apparent.


Well that is pretty much it for today. Lastly I'll just once again share my motivating verse:


Jeremiah 29:11
"For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.

See Ya Soon!

4 comments:

Michelle said...

This is a great post.
I have been thinking about reading `Becoming More Than A Good Bible Study Girl`, but haven't started yet. I have taken lots of Bible studies but haven't retained much.

I like your motivating Bible verse.

AudreyO said...

I'm back to blogging and trying to catch up with those whose blogs I used to visit regularly.

I am of the Jewish faith. For us, "bible" means "torah" and I study three times a week. It's actually amazing as during the times I'm studying, I'm not focused on anything that causes me stress or concern. It's three times a week where I'm just so focused and it feels so good. I hope you are successful in this goal as I know how great it's been for me.

Bree said...

You just articulated all the thoughts I've been having recently about God and my faith. Thanks. I hope the books help. I'm reading Purpose Driven Life right now and may check out yours when done.

Marie said...

Finding the talents that God has given me is a big one for me this year as well -- I always feel that I have not found my niche, or my place in life yet and that life is passing me by very quickly. I'm going to try and be better at listening less to others and listening more to God so that maybe that elusive path will be more apparent. If that made any sense?!

I really enjoyed this post by the way, it really made me think and I hope that you have a good year working towards your goals!

Marie
bonkersinbarnhart.com