I’m spending time reflecting on this past year, as 2016 winds down and 2017 begins. It has been a busy year. Many goals have been met, and some left unmet, as life events have come and gone.
Normally at this time of year, I spend time prioritizing and writing goals and setting new routines for the year ahead. I still have much left over from last year that I want to achieve in this coming year. It would be easy to feel disappointed. But if I allowed myself to be disappointed in areas I see a lack of progress, it would be non-productive at this point.
I can’t be disappointed that I didn’t get it all done, because truly no one can do it all. It is a lie to believe that you can do everything you want to do. Unless you are financially wealthy, there is a reality for most people that puts some boundaries and financial limitations on goals. No one knows what tomorrow may bring or what next week or next month will look like. We can try to shape the future, setting goals and new routines, but the truth is that the future is not 100% within our control.
If you are discouraged about a lack of progress toward your goals, don’t let it get you down. Your value is not in the goals you achieve or don’t achieve. Your value is not in the amount of money you earn. Your value is not even in what other’s think of you. Look for your answers in God’s word, the bible.
Your true value is what God says about you. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. He knew you before you were formed in your mother’s womb. He was there when you were knitted together. He knows every hair on your head. He knows what you need before you do. He is always there ready to assist you in the challenges you walk through in life.
I have come to learn that the true measure to look at your life with is what Jesus said. Everything about life and eternity is summed up in his words. If you want to know the truth, FOCUS on the words of Jesus in the scriptures and I promise it will change your whole entire perspective!
Jesus taught us to pray this prayer with complete trust in Father God:
“Our Father, who are in heaven,
Hollowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come
Thy will be done.
On earth, as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.
Lead us not into temptation.
Deliver us from evil.
For yours is the kingdom, the power, and the glory.
FOREVER!
Amen!” (Matthew 6:9-13)
I am thankful my life is 100% in the hands of God the Father, and I don’t have to worry about the future. I am thankful that HE knows the future and I can trust Him completely even though I do not know the day or hour of events in my own life until they happen.
“Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?
“So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
“Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For after all these things the Gentiles seek.
For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” (Matthew 6:24-34)
I am thankful for the new year ahead. I am thankful for new beginnings, and I am thankful that I am totally secure in spending eternity with God through salvation in his son Jesus who gave his life for me and rescued me from sin and eternal damnation. I have hope and I have a future in HIM!
I am ready for the new beginnings that Father God ordains for my life. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I am not the author of my story. I am not my own god. He wrote the story and he knows it from start to finish, and I trust him with my life completely.
I encourage you today to pray to Father God, to lay down your worries, and trust him with your life, your goals, your desires, and trust him with all of your new beginnings too.
Be blessed!
