Significant Personal Change

Long ago I gave up the resolutions of the New Year. I never seemed to do very well with them. Maybe it has to do with motive. Maybe it is too much about what I am able to do. The resolutions of year's past speak volumes about my inability to make significant change in my life when I have the wrong motive, or when I depend upon the wrong source for the strength to change. Doing something because it is January 1 is not much motivation and sometimes I prove to be my own worst enemy when it comes to making significant personal change.

To reflect upon the significant changes in my lif it to realize that they are more likely to happen when God is the Grand Director. When we ask, "Lord, what do you want me to do?" and then actually listen, we are more likely to see some different things happening in our lives. So, I have been consciously trying to put myself more in a listening mode in these recent days. It is has been a different kind of prayer experience for me as I have a history of talking too much and not listening enough in my prayer relationship. I have not had the success I had hoped in the beginning, but I do have a sense that it is movement in the right direction.

And the truth is that hearing does not always translate into significant change or movement forward in a different way. Sometimes what I hear or sense in my spirit is not what I want to know, so I do like Gideon, I ask in a different way. Sometimes, too, I hear so clearly that there is no need to ask again. All that remains is to act on what I know. Somehow I think here instead of New Year's Resolutions is the beginning point of real significant personal change in my life--maybe yours as well.