Sacred Holidays: A Devotional Leading Up To New Year'sSample

DAY FOUR: 

We learned on the first day that there is value in looking back and remembering what God has done. On our second day together we discovered that God  is always working something new in us. And yesterday, that God often calls us to “go” into a new way, and has the power to do something unexpected with His presence. 

Today we are going to get a little more practical. We are going to choose the thing we want to focus on. My two most favorite practices for the New Year or a new season are to set a meaningful and realistic goal, or to set a word for the year (I go into both of this in detail in Sacred Holidays: Less Chaos, More Jesus). I think it’s important to choose either a specific goal or a banner word for the year. 

Read Jeremiah 29:11-14 and note why God tell us He knows the plans. 

This passage is one of my favorites to consider when I’m setting a goal or planning something out. It’s re-calibrates me because it helps me remember that God already knows the plan. And He doesn’t tell us He knows the plan to torture or taunt us. He tells us He knows the plan because He wants us to “call upon [Him] and come and pray to [Him]” about it!  When we do this, He will hear us, and we will find Him. Then He says that He gets to work helping us find Him, restoring things, and bringing us back to the place we were meant to be—His greater way that we studied in Isaiah 55. 

The first step to setting a goal or picking a word for the new year is to ask God: “What would you have me do, Father?” Listen. Wait. Ask Him to show you. 

Sometimes we can put more pressure on this than there needs to be. We are afraid we won’t hear his call correctly, or that we will pursue the call the wrong way, or that we will fail altogether. Listen, we might fail, and there is grace for that. Let’s pursue the thing we believe God is calling us towards and trust that if we go astray, He will draw us back to himself, welcome us back into his arms, and lead us on his higher and greater way. 

Today, let’s take some steps towards something. Let’s identify something that we know we need to do and start taking our first steps towards that. 

Something many of us like to do around New Years is setting a goal. Usually these are extreme or unrealistic, and by the third day we are doing worse than we were the day before we set the goal. This is the problem with extremes. Whether it’s dieting, exercising, investing in our spiritual life for consistently, wanting to break a bad habit, or getting started on a new dream, we’ve all fallen into this same failure-cycle. 

Failure and shame are some of the worst sabotages of our journey. 

But there are two powers over these failures . First, prayer. Involving God in our goals isn’t one of the boxes to check on the journey to being successful at reaching a goal—He is a part of all of it. We don’t just pray, “Lord what would you have me do?” once, and then move on. He is in on the process the whole time. 

The second greatest power that will give us success is planning. 

Real the following verses and note what they all say about this idea: Proverbs 3:5-6; Proverbs 16:9; and Proverbs 21:5. 

Planning our steps is what leads to success instead of quitting. 

We don’t need to know the full plan and program to start—remember Abram didn’t know the full plan (Genesis 12). We just need to know the next best step to take and what we need to do to take that step. 

Today, ask God what that first step should be toward your goal (or word for the year) and make all the plans and preparations to take it! (Maybe text a few friends what you are doing so they can hold you to it, or share on social media what you are doing and use @sacredholidays / #sacredholidays for great accountability.)