I decided not to make any New Years resolutions this year for 2 reasons.
1. Somehow I got put in charge of our churches New Years celebration so I’ve been super busy and haven’t even had time to think about resolutions until today!
2. 90% of the time New Years resolutions don’t work anyway. Check out what my friend Bogdan Kipko has to say about that!
By 3 AM on New Years day it was a little hard for me to put words together in Russian!
Just because I’m not making any resolutions doesn’t mean that there’s nothing in my life that I want to change. I have a long list of things I need to work on, I’m just going about it a different way. Maybe I’m making a big mistake but this is what I’m planning to do.
Singing our New Years greeting with some friends
Instead of making concrete resolutions I have identified 4 areas of my life that I need to work on. I call them my New Years “pursuits”!
What’s the difference?
A resolution is something concrete like “lose 10 lbs” or “read 10 books” or “workout every day”. You can get it done and check it off your list. You’ll feel pretty good about yourself if you accomplish it and pretty bummed out if you don’t. It may or may not make you a better person.
A pursuit is something you need to work on constantly but at the same time you know you’ll never quite be there. It’s like how Paul said,
I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:14-15
Here are my top 4 pursuits for the New Year!
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Pursue God through deep personal Bible study
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Pursue family by spending quality time with them
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Pursue others by investing in real life relationships
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Pursue Jesus by telling people about his love and forgiveness
I’m sure I’ll stumble throughout the year but my goal is not to check a box and say “I did it!” My goal is to grow and continue pursuing no matter what!
Question: What are you pursuing this year!
Dan Black
January 4, 2013Great things to pursue. I’m striving to have a closer and deeper relationship with God.
Caleb
January 5, 2013Blessings on your pursuit! I don’t think there really is a greater one than that!
Scott Couchenour
January 11, 2013These are 4 fantastic pursuits, Caleb. If more people would make these their pursuits as well, I believe a lot of burnout would be virtually eliminated.
I’m curious… as you proceed into the year, what measures will indicate that you are succeeding?
Caleb
January 11, 2013Scott, I think one of the differnces between pursuits and goals is that goals are a lot easier to measure. I think with pursuits one way of measurement is to take regular time to reflect on how you are doing. In a way it’s like learning a language. After a year or two a learning a language it’s very difficult to come up with and precise measurement of how well you are doing. On the otherhand you can look back over the past couple of months or the past year and in general you know whether or not your making progress. The same is true with any prusuit. We need to continually be striving to improve and checking our progress periodically.