4 God-Glorifying Resolutions for 2023

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The new year is upon us! 2022 is almost in the books and 2023 is right around the corner! With that being said, I thought I would take this pastor’s blog to exhort you on setting some godly goals for this coming year. So, here are 4 goals worth setting this coming year.

Develop a Daily Bible Reading Habit
Within the church itself, this New Year’s goal seems to be as common as weight loss. The most common iteration that I’ve seen is people attempting to read the entire bible, cover to cover, in a year. With less than 1 in every 3 Protestant Church goer reading scripture on a daily basis, developing a daily routine of connecting with God through scripture is something the church is sorely missing.

While this is a worthwhile endeavor, if you have not developed a daily bible reading habit, this is a tall order because it takes a lot of reading per day to complete in a year. Then, if you get behind a day or two, it is like that big pile of laundry sitting on your bed that really needs to get folded but is just too big to conquer so you let it sit and start just picking your clean clothes out of the pile itself. There is a lot of overlap between being physically disciplined to get in shape and being spiritually disciplined to read the bible daily. So, here is some advice that has helped me in the past develop this routine.

Start off small. Pick one of the easier-to-read books of the Bible and read a chapter or two a day. While I love books like Leviticus, Ecclesiastes, and Job, they usually prove to be “boring” to those developing this discipline. I would advocate reading a book that is mostly narrative. The Gospels are a great place to start! Acts is also a good one! Working through these 5 books a chapter or two a day will take plenty of time to walk through. By that point, consider working through some of the New Testament epistles.

Schedule the time with reminders. I love the Youversion bible app. It allows you to choose plans and sends you reminders every day and tracks every day you read! It’s a great way to have it stay in the front of your mind. Also, the Bible Project plans on Youversion are my favorite! If you miss a day or two, just pick back up where you left off!

Reclaim your Time for God’s Glory
The biggest reason I believe people are unable to stick to goals, (I’m including myself here) is because of bad time management. Now I have my excuses certainly. I struggle with focus and sticking with tasks for long periods of time. This inevitably ends up turning into a last-minute, midnight-hour completion of vital tasks. The bad thing is that these tasks could have easily been spread out and completed in chunks. Now, personally, this pressure actually helps me focus. But it’s not sustainable and it usually prevents me from doing other worthy tasks, like spending quality time with family, etc.

In his book, Spiritual Leadership, J. Oswald Sanders writes, “a leader will seldom say, ‘I don’t have the time.’ Such an excuse is usually the refuge of a small-minded and inefficient person. Each of us has the time to do the whole will of God for our lives,” (Sanders, 94). If that didn’t step on your toes enough he goes on to say, “Another translation (of Eph. 5:16) renders the verse ‘buy up the opportunities,’ for time is opportunity. Herein lies the importance of a carefully planned life: ‘if we progress in the economy of time, we are learning to live. If we fail here, we fail everywhere,'” (Sanders, 95). So, in short, managing your time is vital to a spiritually healthy life.

Here are some practical tips that have helped me:

Make a weekly calendar, broken down daily, with each task you wish to accomplish. Go ahead and include all of your menial tasks as well, such as chores, a 10 min. tidy around the house, meal prepping, etc. Include vital tasks such as bible study, family time, etc. And as a bonus, I suggest color-coding them based on priority. That way if life invades and eats away time with unscheduled things, you can still accomplish the important tasks before the less important tasks. Learn to measure the days so that the months and years can be conquered (Ps. 90:12).

Identify and limit time wasters. This one is tough. Do you find yourself reaching for your phone to check social media first thing in the morning? Do you find yourself sitting and watching hours of TV? Often times these things are habits and addictions we aren’t even aware we have. I often think of Jesus’ words in Matt. 5 when He talks about cutting off your hand and gouging out your eyes if they cause you to sin. I believe wasting time should be taken as seriously as any other sin and should be dealt with in the same manner. If wasting time on social media is causing you to sin, cut it out of your life. For some folks, it’s getting rid of all access. For others, it is severely limiting it. Either way, reclaim that time for God-glorifying activities.

Rebuild/Renovate your Temple
Paul, in 1 Cor. 6:19-20, refers to our bodies as temples of the Holy Spirit. Now, looking at me, you may be thinking to yourself, “he’s one to talk.” Yes, I know I have work in this area to do myself. But I’m not calling us or you to simply lose weight. I believe we need to put our body’s health into a Kingdom perspective. It is about taking care of the vessel that God has given you here on earth and keeping it in such a shape that God could call you anywhere He wanted without any physical impediments. Now obviously some folks have chronic issues that would prevent us from certain Kingdom work, but it’s still about maintaining what you have and what does work.

Brit and I have begun a health journey through our Medi-share insurance where we meet with a health coach on a bi-weekly basis. Here are a few things we’ve picked up so far from this journey.

Diet and exercise are the two main things it boils down to. For some of us, changing one is easier than the other. For some, both seem like mountains. Either way, it’s nice to see that it really is as simple as these two things.

It’s going to take time. In our world of instant satisfaction, this is a tough truth to swallow. But when it comes to health, I’ve learned that it’s easy to bite off more than we can chew, then get discouraged and give up. So, take small steps. Sometimes this is changing one meal, doing a 10-minute workout, or addressing portion control. All these little steps add up.

Endeavor to have Family Worship
I would encourage you, in your time management, to include a time of family worship at least once a week. I believe this models the biblical example given in Deut. 6. If you are single, this can be an extension of your quiet time. If you are a parent, this is a great time to exemplify godly worship to your children. If you are a couple, this is a great way to intimately connect over God’s Word and worship of Him. While the church should be a place families should go for spiritual growth, I believe that the main place of discipleship should take place in the home. The church is there as an area of service, corporate worship, and supplemental discipleship. Imagine what the church would look like if every family practiced worship on their own and then came together with others that had been practicing that same worship! Our worship services would be incredible!

Strictly from a parenting perspective, this is a great way to engage in spiritual discussions with your kids and help them construct their own faith and address those cultural issues that seem to be invading the thoughts of our kids at an earlier and earlier age. It also helps normalize spiritual discussions. Show your kids how to read the bible. Work on their comprehension. Let them lead some of the reading to build their reading skills! If your kids are musically inclined, teach them some of those most wonderful of worship songs. Show them that Mom and Dad both want to sing praise to God! There are so many benefits to this! It also helps to keep you accountable to search God’s work and should make you a better reader and interpreter of God’s Word. When those inevitably hard questions arise, this is where the church can assist. Lean on your brothers and sisters in Christ to address those tough questions that kids are so good at asking!

Loved ones, I hope this post has given you plenty of food for thought and great starting points for setting some godly goals this next year. Above all though, I want to encourage you to keep going. Even if you get behind or overwhelmed with any of these, keep going. Don’t give up. The enemy would love nothing more than to keep you from these godly goals. Lean on your faith siblings as often as you need. This is what the church is for! May the Lord bless you in this coming year and may it bring even more glory to Him!

Your Undershepherd,
Pastor Trenton