The New Year Plan

By Michael Griego on December 30, 2016 • ( 0 )

How about doing the New Year’s Resolution thing different this year? Here’s a New Year Planning Tool that’s easy, quick, but profoundly powerful in resetting your course in life. ♦

So here it comes again. Another New Year and another opportunity to clean the slate and set a new course or resolve new activities or remake promises to ourselves and even others.

We call them New Year’s Resolutions.

Let’s do it differently this year. Let’s call it The New Year Plan. But we’ve got to shake things up beyond the normal list of things we will do differently next year. We’ve got to get deeper into what we want, what we’re doing, and why we’re doing it. And how we’re doing it.

Biblical Best-Practices
You will not find the New Year Plan specifically in the Bible. In the past I’ve laid out a Christian New Year’s Resolution-Challenge with specific verses that speak to our plans, thoughts, resolve, and actions. There is no shortage of Biblical guidance to be wise and diligent.

Recall the challenge was to “not do anything without first praying for God’s input, love, power, wisdom, and leading.” Of course, easier said than done. But when done, it’s a game changer.

This time let’s get specific about what we do.

Goals, Targets, and New Resolutions
So ask yourself the following:

What do I really want in life?
What am I really working toward?
What is my real purpose?

If we’re honest, even with a level of faith, there’s a very real chance that your answers are the following:

I want to be successful.
I want to make enough money so I can retire comfortably.
I want to make the world a better place.

We may very easily buy into the standard measures of worldly success: money, home, work, health, family, friends, leisure, even spiritual. Using your favorite Wheel of Success you can even chart it and see where you’re in or out of balance. Here’s my Wheel of Worldly Success:

This is not an unhealthy exercise. Goodness, even greatness arises out of good disciplined effort targeting worthy goals. It is just that after scores of years seeking the ways of the worldly success, I can only say personally that this worldly goal misses the mark.

Spiritual Success and Life Success
I believe that life success is an outgrowth of spiritual success. If you don’t get God and Man and the purpose of the World figured out, you can have all the worldly success available and yet still remain empty in spirit and soul.

And what is Spiritual Success? Here’s my Wheel of Spiritual Success. If it helps, think of it as a deep-dive subset of the Wheel of Worldly Success.

It too can be charted and measured. It is intimate knowledge and relationship with God, with Jesus, with the Holy Spirit, by way of reading and studying the Bible, and through direct Prayer. Out of that relationship and knowledge comes fruitful Service aligned with our God-given gifts returned in kind to our fellow mankind through Giving and sustained through Fellowship and community with other Christ followers.

So What Do I Do With This?
In answer to the big questions about life and purpose and what exactly am I really doing here, I answer them as follows:

I want to know and honor God and be like Jesus.
I want to be excellent in life and service as directed by the Holy Spirit.
I want to use my gifts toward God’s purposes while here on earth.

That is my compass. The offspring of that greater objective drives daily actions and relationships and perspective on my work, my family, my prosperity. Out of that flows the other things in life but in proper order and healthy balance.

Chart your own spiritual life using a New Year Plan that goes deeper than worldly success and the standard targets of life. Go easy, no judgment. Pursue knowledge gaps and go beyond shallow depths with an honest quest for spiritual richness. As I have learned that God is infinitely patient and welcomes a contrite and submissive heart, it is never too late to reset the gauges and targets to a new and substantive goal worthy of all your heart, soul, mind, and effort.

Have a great and truly Happy New Year!

Do you have a right plan for your life?
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That our God may make you worthy of His calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power. – 2 Thessalonians 11:11