A year unlike any before…

This can be true for those who intentionally set out to make this upcoming year special. Why would you want more of the same. This is the year to learn something new. To have experiences. To forgive. To express and feel love. To grow. To challenge. To perspire and to persevere.

This year, 2025, can be the year.

It begins with a dream, with a little forethought, which I hope you are doing right now.

The older I get, the more I realize I want less of what is out there, and I want to know more deeply the things God has given me right here and now.

My goals in previous years have been centered around accomplishments or traveling or attaining something outside of my sphere of influence.

But my goals more recently are much more concerned with becoming who I believe God has made me to be. It is the idea that I am becoming who I am rather than who I feel like I should be.

In order to accomplish this, my eyes have been opened to all the forces around me influencing me to become something else. Everything we do as individuals is formational. The movies we watch and the images on social media influence the story we tell ourselves about who we are becoming. Who we hang out with and the work we do are constantly forming us. The food we eat and the time we spend on the couch is forming us.

Everything is formational.

You and I were created in the image of God to do specific things while here on earth, and the things we allow around us are either forming us more into the image or distracting us and deforming us from that image.

Diane Chandler outlines seven basic dimensions of our formation that, if we do these things well, will help us accomplish any number of goals as we present to God and the world our whole self.

• Spiritual formation

• Emotional formation

• Relational formation

• Intellectual formation

• Vocational formation

• Physical health formation

• Resource formation

If we create goals that will aide us in forming ourselves in each of these seven dimensions, many of our other goals will be accomplished naturally. When we are well-formed and disciplined in further formation, we are nearly unstoppable.

So, instead of making goals of a final destination, I challenge you to make goals about the formation. Take the dimensions above and come up with some goals concerning your formation. Send me an email or comment your goals, I’d love to hear them!

Want another goal-making idea? Check out the Grow30Challenge below!

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