Noble Goals

In just a matter of days we will be entering a brand new year.  This is the time for obtaining a new agenda that will certainly be filled with new appointments, plans, schedules and I believe noble goals.  Before the new year starts, let’s take the time to pause and reflect on where we’ve been and where we’d like to be.  Slow down and take some personal inventory as you think through these questions:

1-How is your walk with God?

2-How is it with your relationships?

3-How are you doing?  Your body?  Your mind?  Your heart?

Jesus said in Matthew 22:37-40, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’  This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it:  ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’  All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

What an incredible year we can look to have when we have noble goals that come in line with Jesus’ Greatest Commandment!

 Consider these noble goals for your walk with God:

1-Read the Bible through in 2022

2-Upgrade your Prayer life

Keep a prayer journal to record requests and answers.

3-Meditate on the Word and Memorize Scripture daily.  Keep new memory verses on index cards in various places like where you exercise or on a dresser or on the refrigerator.  Next time you go for a walk, take a verse with you in your pocket.  Mull it over again and again as you walk.  By the time you come home, that verse will be memorized and your spirit will have been fed!

4-Form a habit of fasting and praying.  Be led by the Word of God and the Holy Spirit how to incorporate this spiritual discipline in your life.  Read Matthew 6:16-18.  

5-Rest in the finished work of the cross.  No matter how many great goals you accomplish in 2022, let’s always remember we are saved “by grace through faith” (Ephesians 2:8-9).

6-Daily seek to be filled with the Holy Spirit and put on the full armor of God.  Read Ephesians 6:10-18.

Consider these noble goals for your relationships:

1-Forgive those who have hurt you!  Remember if we don’t forgive, then we won’t be forgiven.  Let’s follow Jesus’ way.

2-Listen more in conversations.  Follow James 1:19 which encourages us to be “quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.”  That’s good advice for all of us.

3-Keep connecting with others.  Even in the middle of a pandemic we can call, text and email just to check on people. Don’t wait for others to take the first step.  You can do this. Communicate love and offer to pray for their needs.  The Lord will use you.

4-Lead them to Christ. Our relationship with the Lord is primary and all other relationships are secondary. The most important contribution we can make to any earthly relationship is to explain the plan of salvation to another person and lead them to a decision to follow Jesus. This ensures that we will spend eternity together with the Lord. 

Consider these noble goals for YOU:

1-Forgive yourself.  1 John 3:20 tells us that “God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.”  Let that truth wash over your soul.

2-Diet and Exercise

Our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit.  So keep on moving.  Skip the extra sugar, salt, fat, and oil and savor food the way it was made to be eaten.  Let’s come back to normal portions of food on our plate.  

3-Sleep well and give yourself a day off to fully replenish and honor the Lord

Remember that Jesus told us to “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  There is the expectation that we are loving ourselves.  If we love ourselves, we will not allow ourselves to be abused.  We will do ourselves no harm.  We will take care of these bodies in the best way that we can.  Take care of yourself.  Jesus thinks you and I are so precious.  We were worth dying for.  So great is His love for us.  

I don’t know what 2022 will bring, but I know that the Lord God, our Immanuel will be with us.  Let’s embrace noble goals for 2022 and honor the Lord with all of our heart, soul, mind, body and strength.

You are loved. You matter. You are prayed for.