Three Goals Every Christian Should Make For the New Year

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If you’re like me, you’re done making New Year’s Resolutions.

Several years ago, I realized that although I’d stopped actively making resolutions for the New Year, I continued to mentally get up nearly every morning with resolutions in mind for that day.

And I still couldn’t keep many of them even within a 24-hour window.

This is when my perspective began to change. Instead of making resolutions, I began making goals for myself.

What’s great is that many times these goals went hand-in-hand with my One Word for the year, taking New Year’s Resolutions from a setup for failure to an opportunity for personal growth.

And I love that – because it moved me from a perfection mindset to a growth mindset.

Today, I want to share with you what I think are three goals every Christian should make this year and every year.

There are the typical New Year’s Resolutions (and believe it or not, there is a website with statistics for this): 

• Eat more healthily
• Exercise more
• Get more rest, etc…

But the more I walk with Christ, the more I realize how much of my life is lived for this world.

Three Goals Every Christian Should Make For the New Year

When you look at church history, you see how Christians lived with a concept of the supernatural and the afterlife simultaneously with their present life.

They understood more clearly how their decisions today had spiritual significance.

But the more educated and modern we have become, the more “enlightened” we have become, the less we take into account the supernatural realm and heaven.

So that almost all our decisions, desires, wishes, goals, and dreams are centered in the here and now.

The church has fully embraced the concept of “live for today” and “live in the moment”. But is this really how Christians should live?

Jesus taught us to live for eternity!

“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Matthew 6:19-21

What if, as Christians, our goals looked a lot differently than what typical New Year’s goals or resolutions looked like?

What if they looked like this?

1. Spend more time with Jesus

Here’s what we tend to do when we make a goal to pray more:

“Jesus said, ‘Could you not tarry with me for one hour,’ so I need to start spending an hour in prayer each day.”

This is the #1 best way to fail at your goal! First of all, there is no biblical principle or verse in the Bible that commands or even implies that we have to pray for one hour a day.

This concept both discourages and limits you.

It discourages those who have not yet grown to the place where they can effectively spend an hour a day in prayer and limits those who can and should spend more than an hour a day in prayer.

It is far better to spend 15 minutes of earnest and effective prayer than an hour in carrying on about nothing.

The best way to move toward the goal of praying more each day is to slowly increase the amount of time you are spending in prayer.

And don’t forget to spend some of that time in silence, teaching yourself to listen for God’s voice – because He wants to speak to you, too.

Here are my resources on how to develop an effective prayer life.

2. Get to know God’s Word more

We often make the same mistake with Bible reading as we do with prayer.

Each December and January, we receive invitations to read through the Bible in 90 days or a year, and while reading through the Bible from cover to cover is a great habit for Christians to develop, it can become a burden rather than a blessing.

Reading through the Bible isn’t a race to the finish line.

The goal of reading through the entire Bible isn’t so you can say you did it, but it is to get to know God in a deeper way and understand His purpose and plan for our lives here on earth.

If we read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation and find that we don’t know God any better than when we started, we have failed in our mission.

My advice to those who have just begun to develop a daily Bible reading routine is to read until three things stand out. And stop!

Write those things down on a slip of paper.

Put that paper in your pocket and carry it around with you all day, occasionally pulling it out throughout the day to remind yourself what God spoke to you through His Word.

You may not read through the Bible in a year – or even five years – but when you eventually get through the entire Bible, your life will have been radically changed!

Here is a list of the Bible studies I offer at A Little R & R for deeper study of God’s Word

3. Live more for eternity

One of the greatest things we can do for our spiritual life is to discover ways that we can bring our mind and heart back to focusing on eternity – and not this life.

I remember as a child how my dad taught us to ask ourselves when we were faced with a decision, “How does this matter for eternity?”

This would instantly put the decision into context.

How would our churches be different if we all made a greater effort to live our lives with eternity in mind, and not just the here and now?

I am ready to sit down and start mapping out some personal goals for my spiritual walk with God, because I want to grow in each of these three areas.

What spiritual goals are you making for this New Year?

I want to offer you a free New Year’s Goals Worksheet

One thing I want to caution you about, though….

Don’t rush it. Don’t sit down and just start quickly jotting down goals. Take your time, pray about each of them.

Ask yourself, “Why do I want to make this a goal? Is this an expectation God has of me, or is it an expectation I or someone else has placed on me?”

Once you’ve filled out the worksheet, put it somewhere you’ll see it often as inspiration to stay the course.

You can download this worksheet today by clicking here or on the image below.

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