A New Year, A New You: Making Changes in 2013

Writing out your New Years Resolutions is a dangerous thing! After all once their publicized people can ask you about them, or mock you for not keeping them two weeks later. But that is precisely why I am posting them here, to encourage accountability. The things that I am committing to do in 2013 are important and I want to stick with them.

Making changes is never easy, but it’s easier with friends to encourage you, pray for you, and hold you to them. So in 2013 here are some things you can encourage me in, pray for me about, and hold me accountable to:

1. Getting in shape –> Call it operation muscle inflation, but the truth is that I am concerned about being healthy. While I am a skinny guy that is not guarantee of health. My great-grandfather, grandfather, and father all died at relatively young ages. Each for different reasons, but their untimely deaths have weighed heavy on me as of late. Upon turning 30 last year I began to think about what I needed to do to make sure I was taking care of myself, and going to the gym and working out regularly is part of that plan. It’s one of the changes I am making in 2013.

2. Praying systematically for my church family –> I started out well with this back in 2011, but it has fallen to the wayside over time. I do, of course, pray for my church family but it is not a consistent systematic prayer pattern. I want to return to working through my prayer list of our congregations names and lifting one of them up each day multiple times to the Father. It is my conviction that praying for your church members is an important way to love them and to cultivate your commitment to them. I’ll be returning to this pattern in 2013.

3. Starting a new job –> Today I started a new job working for a great local employer, Glockners car dealership. Both in an effort to take care of our financial needs at home and in an effort to take some of the financial stress off of our small church I will be working a full-time job and helping as much as I can at the church. It will be a BIG adjustment for me, as my heart is really in local church ministry. This has already been the hardest change to make. Prayers will be appreciated as we enter this new phase of life.

This is where I am heading in 2013. I write these things to encourage accountability. I want to make lasting changes this year, changes that will be for the better of my life, my family, and my church. By God’s grace I will see them through.