Tag: New Years Resolution

Celebrate the Victories

Victories and Setbacks

Throughout life we all experience victories and setbacks. Sometimes in life it can seem like we go from one disappointment to the next. It can feel like our lives are just full of tragedies, disappointments, and setbacks. This can color our view of life and push us into depression or anger. To combat these emotions, we must learn to celebrate the victories.

Remember the Past

In the Old Testament, the children of Israel are a great example of this very principle. They would start by following God, then they would stop following God, get into trouble, complain about the trouble, and God would deliver them. This pattern was consistent with them and can be with us also. A pattern where we go from one troubling situation to another asking God to help us through each one. One of the reasons that I think they didn’t break this pattern was because they would always focus on the bad situation. They had a hard time celebrating the victories that God had done for them.

They were in slavery in Egypt for 400 years. God delivered them through the 10 plagues that came on Egypt, and then crossed the Red Sea by another miracle of God. Yet, after these great things that God had done for them, when they got hungry they complained and whined about how they would die in the desert. They threatened to go back to slavery because to them, that was better than not having any food. Very quickly they forgot about God bringing them out of slavery, and their focus was entirely on not having any food to eat.

Break the Cycle

To break this type of cycle and change our view, we must learn to celebrate the victories. Celebrate the big and small victories. A victory is a victory. What this does for us is helps us to put our focus on good things rather than being focused on the bad. Being able to see the good things will change our attitude and give us something to look forward to, rather than expecting the bad to always happen to us.

The Light House

How we celebrate the victories is important. Not just that we celebrate them, but that we do something memorable. What we do should be meaningful because it will help us to remember each victory. Celebrating plants that victory in our hearts so in a tough time, we can pull that memory out of hearts to help us through. It is like creating a light house in our heart. When victory seems far away and it’s hard to see through the storm, that light shines to remind us that we will come through the storm.

Begin today to celebrate the victories in your life. We all have victories, big and small, it is up to us to celebrate them.

A New Comfort Level

A Better Year

Will this year be better than last year? I’ll be the first to admit that for most of my life, one year to the next it has looked the same. Any changes that have taken place have been small incremental changes. They added up to some significant positive changes, but I was not always able to see those changes until years later. At the start of a new year, I would haphazardly make a New Year’s Resolution. I didn’t want to change.

A Life of Comfort

There was a level of comfort that I had accepted with my life. Things weren’t horrible but they weren’t great either. I was making enough money to be comfortable, really living paycheck to paycheck, but it was comfortable to me. Comfortable with my health, where I’m not sick but maybe a couple of times a year. Every aspect of my life was comfortable. My job was comfortable, my health was comfortable, my relationships with friends and family were comfortable, my relationship with Christ was comfortable. In all these areas I was so comfortable that I didn’t realize how stagnate I became. To the point that I could make a New Year’s Resolution and not really be concerned when I failed at it. It didn’t concern me because I could always go back to my comfort.

I believe that many people are the same way. Our New Year’s Resolution and goals go unmet because deep down in our hearts we don’t really want to change. When we are comfortable with God, then every other area of our lives we will settle for a level of comfortablity that is less than God’s best.

Great things are accomplished by those that are not willing to settle for the status-quo. God has better standard for us to live by.

Matthew 7:7(KJV)
7 Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:

Ask and Seek

This scripture tells us how we are to live by God’s standard. The first thing is to ask We have to ask for the different areas of our lives to be impacted by the Word of God. Ask to have the God’s Blessing in every area. The second thing we have to do is seek. Seeking is another way of saying that we should persue God. Read the Bible, pray and find the scriptures that will keep our focus on God’s standard.

The opposite of an attitude of comfort is the desire to push for more. Ask and seek God for more. More what? More of Him is the easy answer. How that looks and implementing it into our lives is what can be difficult. Like Matthew 7:7 says, if we do the asking and the seeking, then God will open those doors for us. He will change those area in our lives to His standard. He will also guide us through the difficult parts of this process, as long as we continue to keep our focus on Him.

To make lasting changes this year, we can’t settle for the level of comfortablity that we have achieved. We must ask and seek God for the next thing He has for us.

Why Your New Year’s Resolution will Fail

I was watching this YouTube video by Terri Savelle Foy on goal setting, and she mentioned how 93% of people do not accomplish their New Year’s goals. You can find the video [here] This was an amazing statistic to me. I have to admit that I have been in that 93% before.

Why we fail?

Why don’t we meet our goals? How can so many people fail to accomplish their New Year’s Resolutions every year? There are many programs and books that we can read to learn about how to accomplish our goals, but I think one of the main reasons that people fail to meet their goals can be found in the Bible:

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