Over the past year I’ve come to appreciate the value of goal setting. In the past I’ve allowed the self-help guru’s and pop-preachers to rob me from goal setting. It seemed too health & wealth-y, too “power of positive thinking.” But I’ve come to realize that the truth is, goal setting is really just a part of living life on purpose, intentionally. Can you live life on purpose, achieve kingdom minded tasks and grow without goal setting? Maybe someone can, but I can’t, at least in any meaningful way.

The night before new years eve Kate and I went to a scenic coffee shop, sat down and wrote out some goals for the year. The new year seems like an appropriate time to set goals for obvious reasons, but they’re goals, not resolutions. Resolutions are just a wish list. Goals are ends of your aim with specific actions outlined to achieve them. For the Christ follower, conviction from the Holy Spirit and his (once again we mourn the absence of a gender neutral pronoun) leading are the genesis of goals, while they can be absent adhd from a resolution.

A goal doesn’t need a new year.

I remember as a kid becoming aware of the concept of a “new year.” It was new years eve and for the first time I saw people celebrating on TV. One of my parents explained to me “It’s a new year.” I didn’t get it, wasn’t every day a new year from that day last year?! I’m choosing to embrace that weird little kid when I want to make a goal, but there’s no outward significance to the day, no “new year,” by remembering that every day is a new year, a new year from that day last year. Simply said: You’re goals can’t wait for the Gregorian calendar to come around to December 31st. If you have a goal, set it now.

For everything, absolutely everything, above and below, visible and invisible, rank after rank after rank of angels – everything got started in him and finds its purpose in him. Colossians 1:16

Anyone care to share a goal they’ve recently set or actions you take to achieve your goals?