It’s time to look to 2014 …

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As the calendar is about to turn the page to December, it’s not too early to get working on your New Year resolutions. In fact, if you haven’t started already, you might be running behind!

But before you start that list, take a moment to review how you did on your resolutions for 2013. Do you know a single person who achieved every resolution they made for this year?

I don’t either.

There are a lot of contributing factors to such failure spanning from lack of discipline to having too many items on the list.

The key to any resolution is establishing a personal goal you are fully committed to turning into reality. In that case, one well-thought out goal achieved is better than failing at a long list of wishes you never really made as serious goals. Too often, our New Year resolutions sound more like a set of threats than personal goals, kind of like these “resolutions” from the late Erma Bombeck …

  1. I’m going to clean this dump just as soon as the kids grow up.
  2. I will go to no doctor whose office plants have died.
  3. I’m going to follow my husband’s suggestion to put a little excitement into my life by living within our budget.
  4. I’m going to apply for a hardship scholarship to Weight Watchers.
  5. I will never loan my car to anyone I have given birth to.
  6. And just like last year … I’m going to remember my children need love the most when they deserve it the least.

So, instead of racking your brain to create another insincere wish list, what if you set a single resolution for 2014 and seriously dedicated yourself to achieving it … at any cost. What should that “mother of all resolutions” look like? How about this …

“The purpose of my instruction is that all believers would be filled with love that comes from a pure heart, a clear conscience, and genuine faith,” 1 Timothy 1:5.

The Apostle Paul wrote to Timothy that he could narrow his ministry work to a single objective – that we all “… would be filled with love …” Paul was concise about such a significant goal, describing that such a love would come from “… a pure heart, a clear conscience, and genuine faith.”

Now that sounds like a resolution that would so impact our lives (if achieved) that we really wouldn’t need a long list of wishes, would we?

So why not save some time and simplify your task of resolution-making by joining Paul in achieving this objective in 2014? I think we would all be blessed by the results.

Scotty