This year my theme word is surrender as I realize one of the main things that robs me of the joy I'm chasing is worrying about things that I cannot control. I need to surrender those things to God.As I develop goals through the year I am keeping my word, surrender, in mind. One of the first goals I came up with is a practical way I can shift my thoughts and surrender when worry starts to rear it's ugly head. Before I tell you what the goal is I'll tell you what made me think of it. Bill Cosby! Do you believe that??? LOL
We all know the trouble Bill Cosby is in. Weather you agree or disagree with the rape allegations we can all agree that he engaged in some behaviors that are inconsistent with the clean cut, Dr. Huxtable, image that he projected. Well, every time I would see something in the news about him I would think "what you do in the dark will come to the light". I knew this was from a scripture. When I looked it up it is from Luke 8:17 which says ""For nothing is hidden that will not become evident, nor anything secret that will not be known and come to light." When talking to my mom about Cosby I told her about recalling that message and I thought if only I would think up scriptures whenever I thought about other negative things and then I had my idea for one of my goals for this year.
One of my goals for 2016 is to memorize scripture. I'd like to do one every week but some scriptures take longer than others. We are about four weeks into the new year and I am up to three scriptures so far. I don't have them down 100% yet but I'll keep practicing. My hope is that when I find myself worrying or engaging in other types of negative self talk I can instead recall a scripture that fits the situation.
Here are the three I've been working on so far:
Philippians 4:8
Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable--if anything is excellent or praiseworthy--think about such things.
Philippians 1:6
being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
Galatians 6:9
Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.Spiritual practice is one of the pillars I use to Chase Joy. This goal of memorizing scripture will help me manage my tendency towards worry and quite my negative thoughts. I hope to have at least 40 memorize by the end of the year. Good goal are SMART Goals: specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and time sensitive. My goal of memorizing scriptures is definitely SMART.
Have you set any goals for 2016? Are they SMART? How will your goals help you chase joy Have you ever memorized scripture? How does your spiritual practice help you chase joy?
