By Danielle Harmon
At the beginning of each New Year, we are inundated with encouragement to set New Year’s Resolutions. Lose weight, save more money, read the Bible in a year – the ideas are endless. But what if we spent more time asking God to reveal His goals for this year instead of our own?
The problem with our goals is that, although well-intentioned, they are not complete without God’s input. Maybe we want to lose 30 pounds or start running every morning, but what if God has a better idea of what perfect health can be for each one of us? Isaiah 55:8-9 reminds us that His thoughts are higher than ours:
“’My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,’ says the Lord. ‘And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts are higher than your thoughts.’”
Our ways are not His ways, just as our goals for our lives are not necessarily His goals for our lives. But by spending more time in close relationship with Him, we can begin to think more like Him. As we learn to think more like Him, we also learn to hear and implement His ideas for our lives instead of our own.
1 Corinthians 2:9-10 serves as a great reminder that God has ideas and purposes for our lives that we could never dream of on our own:
“This is what the Scriptures mean when they say, ‘No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love Him.’ But it was to us that God revealed these things by His Spirit. For His Spirit searches out everything and shows us God’s deep secrets.”
God has incredible things planned for us, not just in eternity, but here on earth as well. God desires to share with us His divine purposes for our lives. So as we start this New Year, let’s extend an invitation to allow God to help us set those resolutions.