I am an advocate of setting goals before the beginning of a new year. Philippians 3:13 encourages us to be constantly “reaching forth unto those things which are before.” In my experience, setting goals is crucial to this forward achievement.

Yet, we all know (by disappointing experience) that simply setting goals isn’t enough. If we are to see our goals realized, we must be guided by principle. I have found the following five principles to be crucial to success:

1. Principle of dependence upon God

It’s easy to coast into auto-pilot mode and forget our need for God’s anointing in all that we do (1 John 2:27). Even as Jesus admonished His disciples to bear fruit for Him, He reminded them, “without me ye can do nothing” (John 15:5). (more…)

I always feel like a new year is an opportunity to have a fresh start in so many areas: with my Lord, my family, and our church family. Here are a few things that I have been pondering, and I trust that you will take these to heart and use them in your devotional time as you prepare for 2012.

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Every December, I set goals for the New Year. You probably do too.

Goals not only direct our efforts, but they stimulate them as well. As the adage says, “If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time.”

Before you finalize your goals however, just one question: would your list change if you filtered each goal through John 5:30?

…I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me.

If we want lasting accomplishment from our goals, we must use Christ’s definition of success—accomplishing the will of the Father. (more…)

Christmas—the first Christmas—was a package of miracles. A virgin birth, God clothing Himself in human flesh, the Father giving His amazing love to an undeserving world, Christ making Himself poor that we might be made rich. It’s an unspeakable gift that I can’t begin to wrap my mind around.

But I can open the gift. I can receive the truth that it brings to me. This Christmas, I’ve been meditating on Matthew 1:23: “Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.”

Emmanuel—God with us.

Who would have expected that God would even want to come to us? Who would have thought that God could come to us. But God did the miraculous. He came.

And because of Christmas, every child of God can know with certainty, God is with me—right here, right now.

Philippians 2:6–8 reveals the very thought process of Jesus.

Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

We aren’t accustomed to the downward mobility that brought Christ to the manger and then to the cross. In fact, our thought processes are the very opposite of God’s.

We think up. More recognition. More achievement. More praise. More us.
God thinks down. More humility. More service. More sacrifice. (more…)