New Year’s is a time for resolutions. As you consider what it is that you should be changing in your life, I would like to offer you some tools to help you move from resolution to result in some common New Year’s resolutions for Christians. First, I would encourage you to read Tim Challies article, How to Make a New Year’s Resolution That Sticks. Once you have done that, perhaps you will find some of the tools I have below beneficial in establishing new habits.
Read Through the Bible This Year
Can you do it? Justin Taylor shares this encouragement for how long it actually takes:
Less than 10 minutes a day.
(There are about 775,000 words in the Bible. Divided by 365, that’s 2,123 words a day. The average person reads 200 to 250 words per minute. So 2,123 words/day divided by 225 words/minute equals 9.4 minutes a day.]
If you want to listen to a narrator read the Bible (which you can do so for free at ESVBible.org), they are usually about 75 hours long total, which means at 12 minutes a day you can listen to the whole Bible in a year.
(For those who like details, here’s a webpage devoted to how long it takes to read each book of the Bible. And if you want a simple but beautiful handout, where every Bible chapter has a box, go here.)
The best place to find a Bible reading guide to suit your personal situation is here.
Journaling
Perhaps this is the year that you will begin to journal. Journaling is listed as a primary spiritual discipline in most (all?) books on Spiritual disciplines and its benefits and values are lauded far and near.
Spurgeon, a keeper of a journal himself once wrote,
How did men like Edwards and Whitefield become so unusually conformed to the image of Christ? Part of their secret was their use of the Spiritual Discipline of journaling to maintain self-accountability for their spiritual goals and priorities. Before we give all the reasons why we cannot be the kind of disciples they were, let us try doing what they did.
Once you have decided that you will keep a journal, you then must decide where you will journal and how you will journal. Some people like to journal electronically. I do not, but I can imagine that if I did, Evernote would probably be my preferred journal landing spot because of its incredible search ability. I’ve been using the same journal cover for about ten years. I use these refills from Barnes and Noble. Of course what you use is entirely up to you.
Once you have chosen what you will use for your journal, make a decision of how you will journal. My format is narrative. I read and write and pray and my journal catches all sorts of my thoughts and prayers. A woman in our church recently shared the SOAP method. SOAP stands for Scripture, Observation, Application, and Prayer.
Read More
Do you want to read more? Do you have a plan or a goal? My goal this year is to read 100 books (here’s how). For me, that is a formidable goal, but one that is achievable. Yours may be more or less, but regardless, if you do not make a plan, you probably will not reach your goal. I read widely, but to keep me motivated, I will be keeping track of my reading with a simple spreadsheet I created for my reading log.
Pray More/Better
My favorite tool is Prayermate. Everyone I know who uses it says that it has helped them in their prayer life.
These are just a few potential New Year’s Resolutions, but they are among the top for many Christians I know. Hopefully these few tools will help you. Remember, without a plan, your resolutions will probably fall flat.
