New Year is approaching
When the new year approaches, most people make new year’s resolutions. A New Year’s resolution is a decision to do or not do something to accomplish a personal goal or break a habit. It comes at a time when people look back at the past year and try to improve themselves as the new year begins.
The beginning of the year offers a fresh start and a clean slate. It provides people the opportunity to start fresh.
People worldwide make New Year’s resolutions every year to improve their lives. 80% of people will not stick to their resolutions. Only 4% of people report following through on all the resolutions they personally set at the end of the year.
The success is based on purpose and discipline. Let us focus on Purpose today. Purpose always asks the question why? “Why” is the question that really exposes purpose (the reason why something exists or is done). Why answers the motive behind an action. People with a sense of purpose make more money, cope with life’s hardships are more effectively and are healthier across their lifespan.
Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction. — John F. Kennedy
What does the Bible say about Purpose?
Proverbs 11:28 (MSG) “A life devoted to things is a dead life, a stump; a God-shaped life is a flourishing tree.”
Job 12:10 (GNT) “It is God who directs the lives of his creatures; everyone’s life is in his power.”
Romans 8:6 (MSG) “Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life. 7 Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God, ends up thinking more about self than God. That person ignores who God is and what he is doing. 8 And God isn’t pleased at being ignored. 9 But if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won’t know what we’re talking about.”
The purpose of life starts with God. Colossians 1:16 (MSG) “For everything, absolutely everything, above and below, visible and invisible, …everything got started in him and finds its purpose in him.”
Ephesians 1:11-12 (MSG) “It’s in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living, part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone.”
Romans 12:3b (MSG) “The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what he does for us, not by what we are and what we do for him.”
Before making any new year’s resolutions we have to ask the Why question. Why am I here. What is my purpose? Only once you understand why you exist; you would be able life a purposeful life.
A purposeful life starts with putting God first.
“When we put God first, all other things fall into their proper place or drop out of our lives. Our love of the Lord will govern the claims for our affection, the demands on our time, the interests we pursue, and the order of our priorities.” ― Ezra Taft Benson
Your first new year’s resolution should be to Put God First in everything you do.
Proverbs 3:6 proclaims, “In everything you do, put God first, and he will direct you and crown your efforts with success”