On January 1, 2010 Anna Newell Jones made a New Year’s resolution.
“I was suffocating from the weight of $23,605.10 in debt,” she says. “I decided to take drastic action when I made the decision to stop all unnecessary spending.” Anna started a blog and tracked her progress to family, friends, and strangers. 15 months later, she was debt-free.
Surprisingly, Anna does not credit the victory to simply making a resolution or even the willpower to keep it. Rather, she says, success came from her choice to be public about her resolution.
Anna’s experience reveals two important principles: (1) you must choose change and (2) you are most successful in making a change when you are accountable to others.
Choose Changes to Make for Your Spiritual Health
Anna’s choice for change centered on her financial life, but the principles she used apply to your spiritual life, too. Like getting out of debt, spiritual health doesn’t “just happen.” Year end is a wonderful time to take an inventory of your relationship with God and ask Him to direct what is next:
How has God changed you this past year … and how is He calling you to grow in the coming months?
What scripture or scriptural principles have resonated with you since last December? What will you read and study next?
What has your prayer life been like? How can it deepen?
In what ways have you grown closer to God and to know Him better … or further from Him?
In what ways is God calling you to connect with other Christ-followers to worship, learn, and serve?
Choose to be Accountable
You are likely familiar with the statistics: just 8% of people who make New Year’s resolutions keep them.
Spiritual resolutions can be among the most challenging to fulfill because they are often intangible (“I will become more patient.”) Even when a spiritual resolution is measurable (“I will have a quiet time 5 days a week”), specific (“I will read the four gospels”) or attainable (“I will serve at church once a month”), it can be hard to accomplish. Change is uncomfortable … and we like to be comfortable.
God understands our propensity to give ourselves a pass. That is why He gave us each other – to “encourage one another and build one another up” (1 Thessalonians 5:11, ESV).
The most determined Christ-followers embrace the need for accountability with another believer to share experiences, struggles, accomplishments, hopes, and fears. Your choice to be spiritually accountable can be private (one other person), semi-private (a small group) or as public as you decide.
The question is this: does your choice to grow spiritually include the choice to be accountable to another Christ-follower?
If the answer is yes, then chances are very good you’ll be among the 8% who keeps a resolution this year … even a spiritual one.
