My 2021 Spiritual New Year’s Resolution
When it was time for me to blow out the candles on my birthday cake, I remember wishing that I really wanted to get my spiritual life right in the next year.
Time flies and the new year is now here. Technically, I really should have already started as soon as my birthday was over, but I got lazy and complacent and promised myself that things would change on January 1.
Every year, I make some resolution around reading the Bible more and being more diligent in my faith. Every year, I start losing motivation around March and eventually completely drift off between March and June.
What’s different about this year?
The main difference I can see as I write this on January 3, 2021 is that I will have my Sunday posts focus on my spiritual life. It makes sense to me to set asides Sundays for spiritual thoughts and reflections after having six other days in the week to write about other topics of my choosing.
A few weeks ago, I had an extremely vivid dream where I was about to be killed by some oppressive force for not being able to pay my dues. As I was about to face death, I remember crying and begging for my life. When my soon-to-be murderer asked me why I wanted to continue living, I was filled with regret that I didn’t spend more of my life seeking God.
2020 has shown us all too well how short life is. Too often I read about another life tragically lost, a life cut short. When I see these stories, this question comes to mind: If I knew how many days I had left on this earth, how would that change the way I live my life?
I’m so lucky to have this chance at life, and I don’t want to squander it all on myself. I want to fall in love with God again and share His heart for all the people around me. I hope that the exercise of spending time reflecting on my spiritual life will provide more accountability than previous years.
The Resolutions
- Read through the Bible in a year.
- Develop a better, more consistent prayer life.
I “read through the Bible” one elementary summer long ago. All I remember was that I was embarrassed to realize that I completely forgot that Jeremiah was a book of the Old Testament. Subsequent attempts to read through the Bible have had me disproportionately reading through Genesis more than other books in the Bible.
Using YouVersion Bible plans to do my reading
This year, I’m going to attempt to do two plans, both of which go through the entirety of the Bible in a year. Here are the plans:
The BibleProject plan follows the traditional order of going from Genesis all the way to Revelation sequentially. I was introduced to BibleProject in small group last year, and they produce amazing video content explaining the Bible. As an audio visual learner, I really appreciate watching videos and like that each devotional starts with one of their videos relating to the day’s Bible readings.
The M’Cheyne plan is pretty interesting as it goes through the Old Testament once and the New Testament and Psalms twice by assigning readings from four different books everyday. I attempted to do this plan last year with some friends, but I ended up giving up completely in June.
I’m optimistic about reading more this year. Even though I failed to develop the discipline of reading my Bible more when everything went into lockdown during the onset of the pandemic, I think I am more settled and determined at this point.
Getting better at prayer
I have been in the habit of “praying” every night since I was a kid. But, a lot of these prayers have turned into mindless exercises where I’m looking forward to sleeping or watching YouTube videos in the dark. I believe that prayer is God’s gift of communication with His people, and it is something I want to be better with this year.
The times when I feel myself praying the hardest are the times when I desperately want something to happen. The time when I really hoped that a relationship would work out. The time when I really hoped to get an offer from a job. The time when I was exhausted by friend drama and wanted everything to get resolved.
But if I truly love God, I should be bursting to share my life with Him. God always meets us where we are, but I also believe that I have a choice to seek Him out. I’m making the choice to do that better this year.
Looking forward to the year
I plan to make all of my Sunday articles a separate series for me to keep track of what’s happening. These will be a public journal of sorts. Eventually I might have different focus areas within faith and spirituality, but I’ll figure that out as I go on.
For now, it’s time to get reading and praying!
