Wesley's Covenant Prayer for Today - Video

Over two hundred years ago, John Wesley wrote a prayer for personal renewal and restoration. He encouraged Methodists to pray this prayer at the beginning of the new year. I rewrote the words to this prayer a few years ago. We prayed it in worship on Sunday. Here is an audio version with the text embedded. 

Things to Stop Doing for a Better 2013 and a Better Life

It’s almost a new year. Most of us usually come up with a few things we want to do so that we have a better life: Exercising regularly, spending more time with family, and getting organized. All are noble endeavors. Most of us would do well at doing each of them or something similar. But true transformation happens when we stop doing certain things. Think about the possibilities of what your life would look like if you stopped doing the following:

Stop neglecting your relationship with God. Use God’s wisdom and resources to heal you and become the person God created you to become. 

Stop holding on to your past failures and hurts. You have failed before and you have been hurt. Your past will not define or predict your future unless you let it. Stop letting it. Instead of lamenting over past failures and hurts, learn from them, and do your part to make tomorrow better than yesterday. 

Stop running from problems and dysfunctional behaviors. Avoiding real issues that need to be dealt with are not going to move you forward in life. Prioritize and tackle your problems one at a time. 

Stop pleasing people. It is not possible to fully and continually please another person. So stop trying. Do you really want an imperfect person’s perceptions about you to determine your self-worth? Listen to people. Serve people. Love people. But don’t let others determine your value and happiness. 

Stop being indecisive about what you want. Find your passion and pursue it. Today. There are only so many tomorrows. A year from now, you will wish you had started today. You won’t get to choose when or how you are going to die. But, you can decide how you are going to live today. Define and chase your dreams. 

Stop being afraid to take a few risks. Your greatest regrets in life will not be times you have fallen or not succeeded. Your greatest regrets in life will be the opportunities you didn’t take. You can get up from a fall. You can’t make a shot you don’t take. 

Stop being ungrateful. Envy and jealousy are cruel criminals. They steal today’s blessings like no other. Every moment you spend practicing envy and jealousy, you miss the beauty of life’s many blessings. And you have many of them! You will not experience contentment if you don’t enjoy and if you aren’t intentionally thankful for your current blessings. 

Stop not living in the present. Life’s greatest moments are spontaneous and not planned. We can plan and create environments where great moments happen, but we must live in the present to experience the great moment. We were not created to be spectators in this once-to-be-lived-and-never-to-be-repeated life. We are participants. So participate. Today. 

The best is yet to come (especially if you are able to stop doing these things)... 

Craig

11 Ways To Have a Miserable 2011

1. Don’t plan. Just roll with the punches. Be reactive and not proactive. Don’t make a list of things you want to get done, places you want to go, people you want to connect with, and goals you want to accomplish. Just remember, when you fail to plan then you are planning to fail.

2. Do as much as you can by yourself. Don’t enlist the help of others. Don’t seek the advice of others. Misery loves company, but it most likely happens alone.

3. Neglect your most important relationships. Seek intimacy in inappropriate ways. Don’t trust others. Be afraid of being hurt. Gossip about others to feel good about yourself. Talk more and listen less. Demand your own way. Nitpick. Demand others be who you want them to be rather than their true selves. Believe kindness is overrated. Don’t be patient with others. Demand perfection. Carry grudges and don’t forgive others. Make others pay for their mistakes.

4. Stay busy. Don’t schedule downtime. Stay plugged into technology at all times. Be connected a little bit to everything and everybody so that you aren’t really connected to anything or anybody. Say “yes” to so many average things so that you don’t have the time or energy to say “yes” to the best things.

5. Don’t deal with your past. Carry all burdens of your past mistakes. Realize it’s not likely you are going to change. Don’t forgive yourself. Let your history define your future.

6. Don’t take any risks. Be afraid of falling. Be afraid of failing. Play it safe. Don’t explore. Don’t chase dreams. Don’t be vulnerable or authentic with others: the chance of being hurt a little bit far outweighs the benefit of loving someone and being loved by someone.

7. Quit when times get tough. Throw in the towel the first time you take a punch to the stomach. Raise the white flag when the battle is not going your way. Accept the easy life and don’t strive for the good life.

8. Place a lot of stock in what other people think about you. Try to impress others. Base your self-worth on what you think others perceive about you.

9. Don’t give anything to anybody. Hoard your holdings. Stockpile your savings. You have earned what you have. Keep it. Be stingy with your time and energy too. You can get far greater blessings in life doing what you want to do rather than helping a child or a hurting person.

10. Don’t worry about your character and integrity. Let things slide. Take a few shortcuts if it’s what you need to do. Cover up your shortcomings with image management. Do the easy thing and not the right thing. Don’t care who you are when nobody is looking.

11. Don’t focus too much on your relationship with God. You will have plenty of time to do that in the future.

The worst is yet to come…

Craig