This One Thing

As the New Year approaches, what are you focused on? Have you made your list of New Year Resolutions? Did you know that 40 to 45% of American adult make one or more resolutions each year. Among the top new years resolutions are resolutions about weight loss, exercise, and stopping to smoke. Also popular are resolutions dealing with better money management / debt reduction. The following shows how many of these resolutions are maintained as time goes on:
- past the first week: 75%
- past 2 weeks: 71%
- after one month: 64%
- after 6 months: 46%

Now what would you say if I told you there is a way to achieve all your goals by just focusing on One Thing? I am just going to brush the surface of a message I heard, but if you feel lead to hear the whole message you can go to http://www.impactchurch.info/ and listen to the podcast from Sunday December 27th, 2009!

The bible gives us several referances to this One Thing. Lets start with Philipians 4:13, "I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me." ...
This is the core to what I am about to share. Now if you go back just one chapter to Philipians 3:10-14 you will find more! Referring back to achieving all your goals... Phil 3:13-14..."forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead. I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus."

Are you seeing where I am going with this?

Now there is priority which has to take place when you are trying to achieve a goal, so lets talk about that for a minute. Matt. 6:33, "Strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all things will be given to you as well."

JESUS HAS TO BE THE CENTERPIECE OF YOUR LIFE!

This is the One Thing that should be our focus for the New Year! So go shred, tear up or burn that list of New Year Resolutions that you have been writing, start reading your bible instead and keep your eye on the prize! I know I am!

Bah Humbug

I am trying not to feel this way, but I do. I am in a rut and cannot seem to pull myself out. There are no signs of Christmas at our house. While everyone else talks of decorating, baking, putting up the tree, shopping, etc., there is none of that happening here! We are struggling financially and even though I know that is not what Christmas is all about; the shopping for gifts I mean. It is still depressing to know that I cannot even afford to go to the dollar store right now. It is depressing to know that I scheduled an appointment to get family pictures done and I might have to cancel because in all reality we cannot afford it. Christmas has just become another day on the calendar and that well is depressing. I think of it as work; putting up the tree is work, decorating is work, putting up the stockings is work. I usually put out our Christmas Cards, but I have not because well it is depressing. It reminds me of the fact that I cannot afford the stamps to send out any of my own. Nathan and Alex do not believe in Santa anymore and Abigail and Luke are too young to care, so that is depressing. I honestly don't even know if I want to teach Abigail and Luke to believe in Santa. I am trying to get in touch with the true meaning of Christmas, but that is not even helping. I think it is because I have always believed Christmas is about giving and well we cannot afford to give and that is depressing. My mom and dad are doing this www.christmasjars.com for Christmas next year and when I heard about it I thought, "I am a needy family right now!" I honestly felt like they should have been offering us some kind of help and not asking us if we wanted to help. That is depressing because I know there are families worse off then us, but we still have needs. Yes, we have a roof over our heads, clothes on our backs and food in our stomachs (barely), but our bills are piling up, the food we have is from a food closet, and well he clothes are the same clothes we have had for years and years. It would be nice to be able to go grocery shopping, buy a new outfit for the kids, pay rent on time, etc. I am not trying to sound ungrateful or greedy, because I am neither of those, I am just well depressed and not feeling the Christmas spirit this year. So Bah Humbug!