Normally when you think of New Year’s resolutions, you think of a long list of goals in different categories. For our New Year’s Bible study, though, I’d like you to take just one of those goals and focus your renewing of the mind efforts on it.
Our goal isn’t just the goal itself, but also the process – learning how to go to God for growth, for strength, for advice, for comfort, and just to be cherished.
Because this process can be time consuming, it’s important to choose a goal you care about. One you’d really like to accomplish so you’ll be willing to put in the effort to work on it until the process itself becomes enjoyable.
Some goals are easier to reach than others. For example, I’ve found it to be much easier to break free from negative emotions such as anger or worry than from habits like procrastination and overeating. So if you feel like you’d like a project that would be a little easier, you might want to choose an emotion.
Here’s a worksheet you can use if you’re having a difficult time coming up with a goal to work on. (Click here for a printable worksheet: New Year’s Resolution Worksheet.)
Choosing a New Year’s Resolution
1. What areas of your life cause you the most stress?
2. Why do they stress you out?
3. Circle the negative emotions and attitudes you’ve struggled with lately: worry, fear. stress, grief, sadness, despair, fear of failure, fear of what people think, anger, annoyance, frustration, self-condemnation, self-pity, insecurity, perfectionism, discontentment, envy, pride, judgment, a critical spirit, anxiety, people pleasing. Which three have you been struggling with the most?
4. What habits and sins have you been struggling with lately?
5. Can you think of any good habits you’d like to develop?
6. Think of your family, friends, and others. What habits and negative emotions get in the way of loving them well?
7. Think of your relationship with God. Which of your habits and negative emotions most interfere with your relationship with Him? Are there any habits you could develop that would improve that relationship?
8. Look back over your answers to the first seven questions. If you could set three goals for the year and be guaranteed you could reach them (which is of course impossible), which goals would you choose?
9. Why would you choose those goals?
10. Which three goals do you think God would choose, and why would He choose them?
11. Look over your answers to the preceding questions and list two or three possible New Year’s resolutions you could work on this year with God’s help.
Exploring Your Options
Read over your answers to the above questions and narrow your possible projects/goals down to one or two options. For each project, answer the following questions:
1. On a scale of 1 to 10, how hard do you think it would be to tackle this project?
2. How would your life change if you were to reach this goal?
3. How would accomplishing this goal affect your relationship with God? Explain.
4. How would accomplishing this goal affect your relationship with others?
5. How would accomplishing this goal affect your testimony and/or ministry?
6. Have you decided on a goal yet? If so, what is it? State it as clearly as possible.
For More Help in Following Through with Your Resolution
- Note: Click here if you’d like to print out the above worksheet: New Year’s Resolution Worksheet.
- Click here for a New Year’s Bible study on this blog to help you follow through on your resolutions: New Year’s Bible Study
Other Bible Study Resources For New Year’s Goals
Renewing of the Mind Project Since writing this post, I’ve published a book that contains this New Year’s Resolutions Worksheet and other resources to help you follow through on your resolutions. More than half of the book is filled with Bible verses and questions that will help you renew your mind and have conversations with God about your goals. You can use it by itself or as a companion to these free online studies and workshops.
Taste for Truth: A 30 Day Weight Loss Bible Study Many of us have weight loss goals this time of year as well. The Taste for Truth Bible Study is focused on the lies that make us eat, body image, and the weight loss process. I wrote this Bible study to go along with the questions and Bible verses in I Deserve a Donut, and although you can do the study without I Deserve a Donut, it’s best if you have both books.
I Deserve a Donut (And Other Lies That Make You Eat) is a renewing of the mind resource to use in the midst of temptation and also to prepare yourself for temptation. I use it all the time, just for regular life. It is filled with 36 sets of questions and over 150 Bible verses that you can use to have conversations with God about life and food. The questions and Bible verses will help you renew your mind, taking off the lies that make you eat and putting on the truth that will set you free. It’s also available as a free app.
Freedom from Emotional Eating: A Weight Loss Bible Study is an 8-week (40 lessons) Bible study that focuses on emotional eating. Although there is material on boundaries and breaking free from the control of food, most of the book is devoted to learning how to let go of negative emotions. The comment I get most often with this book is that yes, it helped me with eating, but it helped me even more with letting go of my negative emotions.
I love this approach. A lot of times we want to work on something that keeps us busy but doesn’t really challenge us. We want to surround ourself with busy work in an effort to procrastinate on what we really should be doing. I love how you try to break through that here and have us focus on the goal that’s most important. Often we know what that is deep down – we just need to gather up the courage to tackle it.
Ha – my husband would agree with you. In the first 20 years of our marriage I would start a huge project right before we went on a trip – to avoid packing for the trip. Then I would frantically race around the night before trying to get ready and start the trip tired. It’s only the last couple of years I’ve developed the habit of finishing the packing early enough that I can relax a little bit before we go!
I thought only I did that!! At tax time I set up projects everywhere to do to avoid doing taxes!! LOL!!
Haha – well at least it’s a good motivator for other projects!
Already know what my goal is that I need serious accountability on:) Looking forward to this journey with you, Barb, and with all your tribe!
It will be nice to have you along, Elaine!
Great questions, Barb. My goal this year is to live with intentional gratitude, and allow that to influence every part of my life. Count me in to take this journey along with you. I am so excited about the things the Lord is going to do this year.
I feel the same way, Deb. And I love your goal for the year. I think gratitude really can influence every area of our lives. For me, it was the main answer for breaking the stronghold of worry. Others have told me it was their best strategy against insecurity and anger. Plus God has often convicted me of my ungratefulness when I’ve been feeling discontent, and gratitude helps break me out of that. I would love to be a person who is continually thanking God for His goodness as I walk through life. What a great goal!
I’m starting out the new year with your study! I This could be painful like pulling teeth, but great if it produces change in me. :) I was looking at your list of emotions and thought…..hmmm I didn’t realize so many applied to me. LOL Then I looked at your question: “What produces stress in your life?” I realized….
It is people because being around people produces those emotions: insecurity, people pleasing, envy, worry, fear etc!
Ha, I agree. Transformation is often like pulling teeth! Painful, costly, inconvenient – but it feels so good once it’s over! Your observation in doing the worksheet is interesting – I would guess a lot of people would answer it similarly, maybe most. For me stress is a good trigger to know when it’s time to renew my mind because my stress is often fueled by other emotions which usually stem from some unbiblical way I’m looking at life – if that makes any sense at all. :)
Perhaps it’s like the saying: “which comes first the chicken or the egg.” I’m stressed when I worry about pleasing people. So if I didn’t worry about pleasing people, I wouldn’t feel stressed. Attack the emotion, and you’ll relieve the stress. And the Bible speaks about people pleasing vs pleasing God.
Yes, that sounds right. And I’m less stressful when I try to please God because I know He loves me no matter what.
Wow! Gratitude- yes! Lack of gratitude is what is feeding my negative emotions. I have been ungreatful. God has been so GOOD to me, He sends so much my way, and yet I hold on to self pity because of being uncomfortable from the rough patches.
I am going to work on this, I’d love to hear how working on gratitude improved other areas of your life Barb! I love the way you put things into perspective. It always hits home!
And I was pretty embarrassed by how many negative emotions and attitudes I had from #5!!
Good stuff! (((HUGS)))
It may seem strange, but I often do different things with different emotions. Praying with thanksgiving is what broke me free from the stronghold of worry, but I haven’t used it consistently for my other emotions. I think it would work for a lot of things, though. At first I had a lot more questions on the worksheet, but I was getting so discouraged looking at all of my faults and sins that I thought I better cut some of them out! So I understand your feeling with #5!
Thank you for these questions, they helped me realize more about the word God gave me for this year: Dependence. That’s what God wants from me. It will set me free from worry, stress and the idol of thinking I can control anything. I don’t think I’ll ever completely overcome this, I’m human, but I know I need to learn to rest in the promises of God. That will increase all the fruit of the Spirit in my life and bring Him the glory He deserves.
Please email me the questions as I don’t use FB. Thanks!
Dependence seems like a great word, TC. I’ll look forward to seeing what God does in that area of your life. I think I might just post the daily challenges at the blog as several people have mentioned they don’t have e-mails.
I love the sort of twist to our usual thinking processes especially when tackling something that needs to be changed. What causes stress? I’d usually focus on dealing with the what on a superficial basis. But delving deeper the thing that causes the stress is usually not the real issue—-this helps me focus more deeply to the root of the problem.Without digging up the whole root the problem doesn’t go away—it comes back like when you cut a weed at ground level—–and some weeds come back ten fold! Thanks for the new perspective, Barb! Kathi~
That’s such a great analogy, Kathi. Now if only it were easier to get those roots out! I sometimes find myself renewing my mind about a habit and then realize, wait a minute, I better go deeper than the habit. When I find out what is making me want to do my bad habit (or not do my good habit), I’m usually closer to the root of the problem.