Happy new year!!

​​Happy new year saints!! We made it!! It's the year of our Lord 2017. Glory be to God for watching over us and ushering us into a brand new year. May His name forever be praised. Amen.

The start of a new year always brings about a sense of optimism and a renewed hope. We usually resolve to make some changes in our lives which are intended to improve certain aspects of our lives whether mentally, physically or spiritually. The sad news is that often times we do not even make it past the end of January before we break those resolutions. 

So why is this year going to be different? Well for me this year is going to be different because I am going to use the first few months to reflect on what happened last year and the previous years. Why was I not able to keep to my resolutions? What are the things which prevented me to sticking to the plans I made? Are those things still around this year to influence my plans?

I believe the problem with new year resolutions are that we make them and then we immediately jump into trying to acheive or accomplish them without first planning. There is a saying that goes "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail" and I believe that sums up why we fail and why we fail so early on in the year.

I will spend a few posts this month talking about planning from a biblical standpoint. In order for the desired effect to be on purpose rather than by accident, the planning must stem from a purpose. This month we are going to "Plan our work and work our plan" and we will start off with these 3 points as our guide.

1. PURPOSE:- Define the purpose in one clear sentence. What are you trying to accomplish and why is it important?
2. CURRENT SITUATION:- If you know where you want to go but you do not know where you are, it will be very difficult to get there. This part should be more than just a sentence. This is the part I mentioned earlier. It will require you to examine your past failures and sucesses and determine what forces hindered your progress and what forces helped you make progress. There is an analysis which is often done by businesses and other organizations called a SWOT analysis. SWOT is an acronym for Strengths , Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. 
3. ACTIONS TO TAKE:- This is the actual work part of the plan. The turn by turn steps to get to your destination. This part is where you take what you've assessed from steps 1 and 2 and come up with your goals you want to acheive and the things you need to do or avoid in order to acheive them.

In the next few posts, we will walk through these in more details and with support from The Holy Bible so that hopefully by the end of this month we can be more confident about making a 2017 resolution and sticking to it. 

Please leave your comments or questions below. Thanks for visiting, I hope this post was a help to you. If you know someone who can benefit from this post, please share it with them.

Thanks again and God bless you.

​-Albert Akuamoah