Starting over 2008

Today is January 1, 2008 and for some of us this is a day of reflection and renewed purpose as we turn our hearts and minds towards the New Year. Instead of making New Year resolutions that I can not keep I have decided to learn from the failures of 2007 and to start over in 2008. Like most years 2007 was full of good intentions, successes and failures. The reason I want to reflect on this last year and all that transpired is not for the purpose of beating me up. It is so easy to be super critical and pass judgment on my failures or inability to achieve some of my goals.
I believe each and every day that God gives me to live is a glorious gift. How I treat this gift is up to me. I can either waste the time away frivolously or I can chose to live through this time with purpose and set some goals. I have found that if I do not have goals that I find myself wandering aimlessly through life wondering what my purpose is. Wandering from day to day without purpose is dangerous because left to itself the mind and flesh lends itself to making itself happy.
One of my favorite books other than the Bible has been The Purpose Drive Life by Rick Warren. I do not feel that Rick Warren has all the answers nor do I hold him or his book in higher regard than God’s word. It is so easy for us to latch on to someone or some thing and become fixated on it to the point that we make the mistake of worshiping it or them more than the creator. I always tell people that they should eat the meat of what you are reading or hearing and throw away the bones. In other words no matter who the man or woman is that is doing the teaching they are looking through the same piece of stained glass that we are. No matter who the person is or what they are teaching us we need to remain diligent in holding the material up to the light of God’s word.
One of the things that I like about The Purpose Driven Life is that it reminds me in many ways that God has a purpose for my life. Purpose gives me focus and a reason to live from one day to the next. Some people call purpose a mission statement or statement of faith. My family attends and serves at Grace Fellowship Church in Goose Creek and our mission statement includes the words from Mark 12:30 which says “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind and with all your strength (31)The second is this ,love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment that is greater than these.
In this New Year I want my life to have purpose and meaning. I want that purpose and meaning to have eternal value and not just value for the here and now. In order to do this I have to focus on the right things and purpose in my heart and mind to be in a place where I can do these things. The only way that I can love God with all of my mind, soul and heart is for me to get in touch with Him through his written word, prayer and fellowship with other believers. I need to spend less time being a man pleaser and more time being a God pleaser. That means that I will need to prioritize the time that God gives me each day to fulfill His purposes in my life. It is so easy to be caught up in a whirlwind of useless activity.
Sometimes we fail at meeting our goals because of poor planning and commitment. A dear friend of mine shared this with me today about goals. The goals must be RUMBA. That means they must be reasonable, understandable, measureable, behavioral and achievable. My friend told me that he learned this principle from one of his Franklin-Covey seminars years ago. I plan on applying this principle to my goals this year.
One of my goals this year is to take better care of the temple God has given me to live in. I am sick and tired of the weight loss and gain roller coaster. I have a 20 lb window that I keep bouncing around in. My goal is to lose one pound per week throughout this year and keep it off. That means that I will need to do whatever it takes to do this. There are tons of diets out there but simply put eating less food, eating the right foods and getting more exercise is the key to the right kind of permanent weight loss. I spent most of 2007 learning some things about exercise and what foods to eat and what not to eat. In 2008 I need to put that knowledge to work and do what I know I need to do.
One of my goals is to be a God Pleaser and not a man pleaser. I need to serve God and do those things with the gifts He has given me because I love Him and not because of what others will think of me. I can not worry about what people are doing or not doing. That is between them and God and not me.
One of my goals this year is to work together with my wife and make wiser financial decisions. In the past I have had a bad attitude with regards to credit issues and debt. I looked upon those issues as some sort of insurmountable task or unmanageable disaster and my response to that was to just not care or ignore it and hope it will go away. I have learned the hard way that was the worse thing we could have done. A good friend of mine kicked me in the pants several years ago and showed me that it is possible to pay off debt and better our credit rating.
One of my goals this year is to be a better husband and father. Simply put I need to be more selfless and less selfish. I need to be a servant leader in my home. The only way that I can do this is to care less about my needs and care more about the needs of my family. There is more to being a husband/father than bringing home a paycheck and barking orders. I do not think that I am a total failure in this area but I know that there are things that I can do and should not do in order to be better at this.
Now that I have outlined some of my basic goals and identified some needs for 2008 I need to create a plan on HOW I plan on doing these things. Once I create these mini battle plans I will have my marching orders or my purpose for the coming year. I feel that once I have a plan in place that this will help me to keep my focus and I can have a more productive and successful New Year. You can join with me and help me to achieve these goals by praying for me during this coming year and feel free to ask me the tough questions and hold me accountable.


James Moffitt
http://www.lightourworld.com
http://moffittjc.blogharbor.com/blog
james.moffitt@comcast.net