New Year Goals
When You said, "Seek My face," My heart said to You, "Your face, LORD, I will seek." Psalm 27:8
A new year brings new goals. What are yours? Maybe they are physical goals that focus on being healthy or looking your best. Maybe you're wanting to focus on how you think and what flows out of your heart. Maybe you're focused on your emotional health and your goals are forgiveness or conquering fear. Whatever your goals are this year it's pretty easy to guess that the spiritual goals are on the bottom of the list. Yes, our intentions may great to read the Bible every day or to listen to Christian music more, but what is our goal in that? Is our goal to simply be a better person? Is our goal in reading the Bible every day simply to say we accomplished it? We live in a society that places more value on the way things look and the way people perceive than on truth. Many Christians have lost their unquenchable love for Jesus. We have lived by our own view of God instead of by who the God of the Bible really is. In making spiritual goals for this new year we need to ask ourselves a few questions such as:
Is the most recognizable thing about my life that I know the living God?
Do I view Jesus as the most valuable thing about Christianity, or do I find the idea of what He can do for me to be more appealing than who He is?
Do I prefer to read and learn passages in the Bible that talk about who God is or do I jump to the passages that only talk about how He benefits me?
Have I replaced a one-time salvation experience for an on-going relationship and understanding of God?
It would be easy to give the "Sunday school" answer to questions like these. We can make goals that include reading the Bible every day but, what is the purpose? Do you desire to know God more this year? Do you desire to know and understand all aspects of who He is? A.W. Tozer once said, "Every person should see to it that he is fully cleansed from all sin, entirely surrendered to the whole will of God and filled with the Holy Spirit. Then he will not be known as what he does, but as what he is. He will be a man of God first and anything else second." What are your spiritual goals this new year? Are you ready to know God more for who He is, not simply for who you want Him to be? Our prayer this week is that you would know and understand who God is and that you would fall more in love with Him each day. May your week be overflowing with an abundance of His presence.
