2026 Goals/Resolutions--Number 4

I look forward to every New Year’s Day on January 1.  Sometime when I was in my early 20’s my mother-in-law bought me a Day-Timer leather calendar with the annual insert.  It was the A5 size and I used it almost religiously for years until the upgraded electronic gadgets and calendars took over.  I can remember using both Day-Timer and the Franklin Covey planners simultaneously trying to keep up with time management.  During those days, you had to order them with a catalog usually by late October and early November so you would be able to have it ready by January.  I can remember when they went from the basic calendar packages to themed settings—leadership, patriotic, travelers, and so forth.  The Franklin Covey inserts were really high end and would be sent to you in a metal tin box so you could save them after the year had ended.  I have several of them packed away from years ago. 

Another thing that I started doing was around the beginning of December, I would start mapping out a list of sorts to sort of move me in a direction to accomplish some goals.  I can remember reading Stephen Covey’s books about the seven habits of highly effective people and what he later wrote about—the eighth habit.  Other time management authors like David Allen, Peter Drucker, Brian Tracy, Ken Blanchard, Spencer Johnson, and Jim Collins were books that I found myself tracking through.  Somewhere along the way I picked up the idea that however you spend your time is how you spend your life.  I know that might not be so profound, but its simplicity makes it worth digging into. 

After those goals were written, I would type them out on the old word processor, Word Perfect, and take them to Office Depot so they could laminate them.  Then I would drag them around in planners and backpacks to keep them in front of me to refresh them in my mind.  It has been a few years since I have done the lamination trick but this year, I am determined to recover some of the early practices that had set my soul in action in years past.  I am in a race with time, and I want the next decade, if I am granted that much time, to be the most effective one that I have ever lived.  I have written out twenty-nine of them and have also laminated Jonathon Edwards Seventy Resolutions to carry around as well.

I want to share one of them with you to perhaps inspire some motivation for positive spiritual change.  Since I am a preacher, teacher, and pastor with some responsibilities concerning spiritual leadership, prayer is an imperative in my life and practice.  I MUST be a man who prays!  Praying is hard work; it is challenging and can be difficult at times.  However, at this point in my life, prayer, both private and public are being recorded in heaven, and I don’t want to be a slothful servant in that!

So, here is Number 4:  Continue to write out prayer quotes from all sources that I run across.  Bounds, Ravenhill, Murray Henry, Valley of Vision, Omartian, and other multiple books/devotionals that I have on prayer. 

Here is your work: Find you a blank journal, inexpensive, around 200 pages, leather, paperback, or cardstock.  Walmart, Ollie’s, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and even thrift shops are good places to find them.  Then, just start copying down the quotes on prayer and you are going to find yourself inspired not to just talk about prayer but to practice prayer.  It will make your spiritual life progress and move forward. 

Here are some quotes that I have written down already in 2026: 

John Owen—He that is more frequent in his pulpit to his people than he is in his closet for his people is but a sorry watchman.

Richard Baxter—Prayer must carry on our work as well as preaching; he preacheth not heartily to his people that prayeth not earnestly for them.  If we prevail not with God to give them faith and repentance, we shall never prevail with them to believe and repent.

Matthew Henry—Just as a shooter aims with one eye while shutting the other so in prayer we must gather in our wandering thoughts. 

E. M. Bounds—When faith ceases to pray, it ceases to live.

These are just a small sample of several pages that I have gathered in so far.  I will continue to use this as a spiritual discipline throughout 2026 and beyond to move my soul in prayer.    

Thanks for reading. . .