Work Your Faith: How to Lean Into Your Faith to Achieve Your Goals
Hey, hey and Happy New Year! I can still say that right? January comes with renewed energy, focus and sense of purpose. The beginning of the year is a time where we are all inspired, we are betting on ourselves to achieve goals, old and new. It’s a great time of year.
Have you set your goals for yet year? If I’m being honest, I haven’t set mine yet. I’m honestly still processing last year and I’m taking my time to sit with it. I do still feel a sense of inspiration to live better, to do better and to generally be better. I have a lot of ideas and things that I want to get accomplished and I know that I can do these things.
Some of these ideas and things that I want to achieve are old goals, unresolved resolutions, if you will. So I had to ask myself, why haven’t I accomplished or completed the things that I was once so inspired to complete?
Inspiration doesn’t get results
Inspiration only lasts for a little while. Once it wears off, it is your action that continues to carry you toward your goal. When we have fresh inspiration, we act freely and use our inspiration as the motivation to keep going. Inspiration is defined in the English dictionary as the process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something. It comes from the Latin word to breathe. Once you breathe in your inspiration, you can use it as motivation, but as soon as you exhale, that breath is gone. Your inspiration is gone. So how do we continue to spur action when our inspiration evaporates?
Faith
That’s right, faith that you can achieve the goals that you have set before yourself is what will keep you going. Faith is what will sustain you when you’ve lost your breath of inspiration. It won’t be easy, in fact, if it’s worth something, it will most certainly be difficult. When that happens, keep going, smile, you’re developing spiritual stamina (James 1:2). You can pressure test your faith by asking yourself the following question: What have I done this week to get closer to my goal?
Your actions are proof that you believe
At some point, you might have people calling you crazy or telling you that it will never work. That’s fine. Keep putting in the work. Prove that you have faith. Even Jesus had haters, but he kept tending to the work that God put him on earth to do. In the same way, whatever it is that is on your heart that you want to achieve, accomplish or complete – there is a reason it is on your heart. The world likely needs it in some shape or form. Don’t give up on that. Show your faith. After all, faith without action is dead (James 2:17).
My prayer for you is that you would have big faith. I pray that you would go confidently in Jesus’ name to achieve your goals. I pray that you would have a firm WHY behind your aspirations and that you would remember that doing the right thing is easy when you have the right reasons. I pray that you would recognize difficulties as tests to grow stronger in your faith. I pray that you would rejoice in your blessings and lean into your support system when things get hard. Remember that with God all things are possible.
Yours in progress,
Anisa-Naomi