Goals for 2013

I don't always do "New Year's Resolutions", in fact I more often don't.  The only one I've ever posted on this blog was in 2011. One of the reasons I don't is that I do have the philosophy that if I notice something that needs changing in my life, I should probably change it right now instead of waiting till January 1st.   That being said, it's also very easy to just go through daily living without purposefully be introspective and noticing things that you would like to change.  With that type of mindset, New Year's is a great time to look over the past year and be purposeful about what you want to change in the coming year.

As a look back - these were my goals for 2011 and whether or not I think I accomplished them.
1) Read my Bible in a year (for the 3rd straight year) and participate in my Bible in a Year Blog. Since it's my blog, there's not a single doubt in my mind that I'll accomplish this goal. In fact, this year we have several more participants which means I'm only posting once or twice a week instead of 4 or 5 times! Easy peasy :)

Check!  Did it.

2) Develop a consistent and organized prayer time. Normally when I tell people I'll pray for them - I do it right then and there because I know there's about a 99% chance I'm not going to remember later. Ok, maybe not that bad, but seriously, it's bad. I want to to take the time to make the prayers more personalized for the individuals I'm praying for, and to simply take time to be with God.

Fail.  

3) Being a more deliberate wife, mother and friend.
I want to spend more time discovering how to put my husband first among my earthly relationships and what that's supposed to look like in my daily living. I want to spend more time doing things WITH my girls instead of merely being together in the house every evening, each of us pursuing our own agendas. I want to conscientiously work at developing an attitude of service and hospitality, to serve my friends and church family members better. All the above categories of people deserve more from me than they've gotten in the past. I don't want people to hear that I care about them; I want them to FEEL it.

If that sounds like I just copied that paragraph from my cousin Tammi's post - it's cause I just totally did. Hey - she got it totally bang on the first time, why mess with perfection?!

This one is, of course, much harder to quantify.  And it's not something you can ever "arrive" at.  So, I think I got better, but there is still so much more room for improvement.


4) Begin each day praying that God would guide me to do what He has planned for my day - pursuing His agenda instead of my own. OK, that one's gonna be real tough! (I probably should've just copied my cousin Tammi's paragraph about this one too!;)

Fail. 

5) Continue to exercise regularly and eat healthier. The exercise thing? No sweat. (ok, lots of sweat!) I've exercised regularly (3-5 times per week) for the past 13 years or so including all 4 pregnancies, except when nausea was at it's peak, so this barely counts as a goal, but it is something I'm committed to continuing. Eating healthier is tougher. But with Nathan having some high blood pressure concerns we need to cut back on the sodium intake around here which means a few changes such as limiting deli meats and making more from scratch. (Ragu, I will miss you!!). I've already started baking chicken breasts for lunch sandwiches, so things are looking up!
Overall, I would say this was a success.  But there is still room for improvement on the eating part.

There were no goals for 2012, but here are my goals for 2013.
1) Read my Bible in a year (for the 4th time in 5 years) and participate in my Bible in a Year Blog.
This is "an easy one" because of the continued accountability factor of my blog.  Last year I did not read through the Bible in a year because I was doing the majority of the postings - generally 9 days every 2 weeks.  But this year we have more participants again, so I'm down to only one post per week, so I'm reading through the Bible in a year again as well as our in depth book study.

2) Develop a consistent and organized prayer time.
Yup, another repeat.  This was an absolute fail and I need to set aside prayer time as priority time.

3) Being a more deliberate wife, mother and friend.
As I mentioned above, this is never something you have arrived at and is always a worthy goal, so it stays on the list too!

4) Begin each day praying that God would guide me to do what He has planned for my day - pursuing His agenda instead of my own.
Again, another one that could be on the list every year.

5) Continue to exercise regularly and eat healthier.
Broken record here, I know.


Now, for some new ones....

6) Write weekly on my prayer blogs for my kids.
Similar to #2 but specific to my children.  This was one of those great ideas that I just haven't managed to keep up.  I created prayer blogs for all our kids that would contain both letters to them, and prayers for them as individuals.  My plan is to make it into a book to give to them at some point during their teenagerhood, either at a certain age or whenever I think they might need it.  Like may of my plans, good intentions have not given way to reality - so far I've only written 3 posts on Emma's blog.  At this point I need to write more often in the older kids blogs in order to "catch up" to at least an approximately even number of entries.  I've decided I need to dedicate one day per week to writing in these blogs so that it actually happens.  (They are private so you won't be able to read them, sorry!).


7) Work on scripture memory.
Last January I began a scripture memory blog to help keep me accountable to memorize scripture as it was something I had felt convicted about for some time and really wanted to do.  It worked, up until September when I fell off the bandwagon.  So, this is a good time to get back on!  Last year I memorized Psalms 1, 23, 46, 121, 134, 1 Corinthians 13 and the Book of Titus (which is 3 chapters).  I will be starting off by reviewing each chapter for one day, and then I will start working on memorizing new chapters.  If you're interested in joining me, I'm following Janet Pope's method and it was much, much easier than I had anticipated and literally took no extra time out of my day.  Check it out!

8) Write regularly to our sponsored children.
More details on this will come in a post shortly, but for now, suffice it to say that I need to make it a priority to write to our sponsored children.  Or rather, to get our children to write to them.  We have one sponsored child for each of our children - all their ages.  They love writing the letters but it's up to me to make sure it happens!

9) Get caught up on bookwork and then continue to stay caught up.
I do the bookwork for my husband's home building company and I am always behind.  Don't get me wrong - I do always pay all the bills, but I don't always enter everything in.  I have to get caught up at least every 3 months to submit GST (good thing for that checkpoint!), but then inevitably I get behind once again.  So, this year, I want to get caught up and then purposefully set aside one day per week to work on bookwork so that I stay caught up.

Now for some "fun" ones.
10) I want to do a "Twelve Days of Christmas gift extravaganza" for Nathan this coming Christmas.  My sister Andrea did this for her husband Les this past Christmas and I thought it was a fantastic idea and want to do it myself next year.  You can check out what she did here.  Needless to say, Les loved it, and I'm sure Nathan will too.  After all, who wouldn't?!   My friend Pamela is doing this one too.  Anyone else in for this challenge?

11) Take and post 365 iPhone photos - one for each day of the year for 2013.  I got this idea from my friend Pamela once again.  She has created a new blog specifically for this project and I decided to follow suit.  You can check out my iPhone Photo Project 365 blog here - I've even already done today's post.  Pamela mentioned that blogger has an app for posting.  I know it doesn't do everything you can do on the regular blogging platform, but it does what I need it to do for this project, so I think this will be relatively easy to do.  And a great memory tool for years to come!  Here's 10 great reasons why you should do it too. Anyone else game for this challenge?

12) Sew big bags for the kids sleeping bags and bedding for camp.  Another idea stolen from Pamela (hey, she had some good ones!).  They should be relatively easy to make, I'll let the kids choose their fabric, they will be sturdier than garbage bags and easier to identify - and just fun!

I think I better stop there - 12 goals is a lot.  But, I just realized, it's one for every month of the year.  Even though some of these are obviously year long goals, and some are regularly occurring goals - it still helps to realize that one goal a month should be attainable!

Happy New Year!!

Grab the Button!

Figured out how to make a "Grab the Button" for the Bible in a Year and Beyond blog - so go ahead and grab it!

Grab the small button

<a href="http://bibleinayearandbeyond.blogspot.com"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPQ6D54sam_1pdf2vu3j3nywgd_X7zY_LSr0VV2XEZi_Onb_DB6puTOlmk0D6ej1VcgXH2bE7yJW8cz0i-nTTM5UuWqveJda5mUKrPs0NXaVWC4PqPtvSpjOs8cOkQQxRm10acbDt-nA0/s150/Bible-blog-button2-2011.jpg"/></a>

Or grab the large one!

<a href="http://bibleinayearandbeyond.blogspot.com"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwW89jiLDnR4iobK6dxkIsr6TibuAtJHUSRJb5HZjNyXTQzZI383DWbEifyLE9s3vLwSfcuU234JIM0oPvBiuzHedd-9nejoHzVk7Vsm8PmfKC37xfC8MRgzsKIM8pAwfkYE38ySCXKCs/s400/Bible-blog-button2-2011.jpg"/></a>

I found the tutorials for how to do this fancy html work on this very helpful blog.

Pursuit of Discernment

The year before last I read through the entire Bible in a year for the first time in my life. Which was really rather pathetic considering I've been a Christian as long as I can remember.

Last year in December I posted about how I was feeling convicted to dig deeper in the Bible and to pursue discernment. Yes, I had read through the Bible, but many days it was simply to be able to say that I had done it. And I wanted to change that. So I started a new blog called The Bible in a Year...and Beyond! because the title captured my vision perfectly - reading through the Bible, yes, but going beyond simply reading it, to studying it, to questioning, to researching, to digging deeper, to pursuing discernment.

I was joined by several other ladies who had felt similarly convicted and together we experienced a year of tremendous growth and insight unlike any year previously. This also was a year where I needed discernment in order to walk through a dark valley alongside a very close friend. Coincidence? I think not!

Because this was such a rich and rewarding experience, and because our need for accountability and motivation has not waned (still human, after all!), we are starting up again and are inviting you to join us!

Last year we did the One Year Chronological Reading Plan. Some parts of the plan I really enjoyed: I loved reading the Psalms as they coincided with the lives of King David and the other Psalmists; it helped to understand some of the books of prophecy better as well to have things in their proper historical perspective. The part of the plan I did not like as much was that it was extremely chronological to the point of flipping between several different books numerous times on certain days.

This year we have decided to do a Chronological plan again. But this one has very little jumping around, and starts in both the Old Testament and the New Testament at the same time - which can be a big pro for those who have found the OT hard to get through. This past year was the first time I, and some other blog participants, have really appreciated the OT and found that we learned so incredibly much - I am very interested to see what new insights we glean this year as we do it again!

So, we decided on this Chronological OT/NT plan. Unfortunately, it still had the 2010 dates it in, so I created a PDF file with the corrected dates and uploaded it to the internet - you can access it here. It contains all the links to the Bible passages, and is printable if you download the file to your computer.

One thing I'd like to mention...
So often we (especially first-borns, perfectionists, etc) tend to have an all or nothing mentality. If I can't do it perfectly, if I can't succeed 100%, if I can't be the best, then I'm just not going to even try. Ladies (or any men that read this!), that's not from the Lord. If you didn't have a regular Bible reading/devotional habit before - then any commitment is better than nothing. You have to start somewhere, and who cares if you start small? So long as you start! Your efforts will be rewarded. You will draw closer to Him. You will reflect Him to those around you. And you will be able to be more discerning. There is no downside here!

So, if you choose to read along with us (or choose a different plan to follow on your own, or whatever you decide to do), and if you fall behind - do not quit! You have a few options: you can read a ton to catch up; you can circle the passages you missed and skip them for now and catch up throughout the year as you have time; you can circle the passages you missed and catch up on them after the year is over; or you can simply miss them; or you can pick a different reading plan that goes through the Bible more slowly. Any of those options are entirely acceptable, the only option that is not a good one is quitting entirely. Do not quit!!

So, why read through the Bible in a year?

Well, it doesn't have to be in a year. But the need to be in the Word daily as a Christian, is really not something that we should consider to be optional.

This website answers the question so much better than I ever could.

Why Is It So Important to Do Devotions Every Day?

What would the people in your church look like if they snacked on meager food morsels during the week and ate only one good meal on the weekend? You know the answer, don't you? You'd find yourself surrounded by emaciated, gaunt people in desperate need of nutrition.

And how would these undernourished believers fare against a demonic adversary? Can you imagine how this army would look? You'd see threadbare skeletons with hollow cheeks and sunken eye-sockets, lined up like phantoms. Weakened by famine, that shriveled militia could barely stand at attention; each would struggle to find the strength to keep his or her bony frame upright.

Could this "army" conquer an opposing force?

No way. No earthly general would send them out to fight.

Well, then, how about the army of the Lord? What of those who gather on Sunday mornings? Are they spiritually nourished to fight the battles ahead? Considering what most members of God's army subsist on—an occasional tidy snack from a devotional book and perhaps an average-sized meal on Sundays to satiate conscience—you'd have to conclude that God's fighting force has some serious training to do.

Have you ever wondered why marriages seemingly crumble overnight, and—out of the blue—Christians leaders fall to luring temptations?

The truth is, no marriage instantly disintegrates, and no one suddenly falls away from Christ. For that matter, no one dies from an eating disorder after missing a day or two of meals.

It could better be described as a slow decline—gradual spiritual starvation, barely even discernible to the outside observer. The malnourishment of God's sons and daughters happens over time, as they eat less and less. Then, in their weakness, they do something that shocks everyone, finally revealing what was really going on in their spiritual lives.

Did you know that more than 80 percent of those who call themselves Christians read their Bibles only once a week? And that's usually on Sundays, at church. They come to church to get their spiritual fill, and then snack on devotional tidbits for the rest of the week (if even that).

I wish for just one day God would change the way our eyes work, so we would see ourselves spiritually. We'd see most American churches filled with skeletal, hollow-eyed saints, looking as if a gust of wind would blow them away like tumbleweeds.

Which is why, when some new trend floods America and pushes our nation further away from God, further away from our spiritual roots, the church is unable to withstand the tide. We simply don't have the strength.

So what's the solution? ....

If we eat only once a week, it's no wonder the church is weak and struggling. But daily fresh bread can change all of that. Regularly dining on fresh bread makes for a stalwart, strong, developed army—the only kind of force that will always make a difference in this world.

So, will you join us? We already have several new people joining in, and all but one member is returning again this year. You can participate as much or as little as you are able to commit to. You can read along with us, read the daily posts and comment as you have time. Or you can commit to writing some of the posts as well. It's up to you!

It doesn't have to be my blog.

But choose something.

Choose a plan to get into the Word. Daily. And see what God will do!

Last chance for the giveaway

Don't forget to enter your favourite Christmas tradition (or idea for a new tradition you want to start) and comment on my giveaway post for your chance to win a Seeds Family Worship cd.

The deadline is noon tomorrow (New Year's Day)!

Happy New Year everyone!

Also - check out my new blog for this coming year's Bible Reading plan.

New blog - up and running!

Join me in the pursuit of discernment!

My new blog is now up and running.

For all those who would like to participate in the One Year Bible Reading Plan and Beyond - please email me at ntreimer at mts dot net. Please let me know which Bible reading plan you would prefer (Chronological or Weekly Theme format), how strongly you would prefer that plan and how often you would like to commit to posting on the blog. In order to give you rights to post on my blog I will also need to have the email address that is connected to your blogging profile.

I created my button with the "Theme" reading plan in mind (as that seemed to be what was popular so far), but it will be majority rules on this, so do please let me know what you want.

Looking forward to starting this journey together!!

Bible Challenge - Option 2

Edited to add: see details at the bottom of this post.

As I was thinking about the Bible Reading and Beyond challenge I threw out there the other day, I had another thought.

I know for some people the thought of reading through the whole Bible in one year just seems like such a daunting task. You might fall behind and then it would be too overwhelming to catch up, and then you would've failed at reading the Bible and you would feel really bad.

And that's not going to anybody any good!

So, I had another thought. Why does it have to be all or nothing?

It doesn't!

If you are interested in participating, but not sure if you could be the whole Bible in one year - this option is for you!

If we select the reading plan that has a different type of book for every day of the week, you could commit to reading anywhere from 1 - 7 of those days! You could pick just the Gospels. You could pick just the books of Poetry. You could read both the books on History and the Epistles. You could do Gospels, Psalms and Prophecy. You can literally pick any combination that you like!

And just cause the plans says that Poetry is on Thursdays doesn't mean you have to read on Thursdays. If you really want to do Poetry, but Thursdays are crazy busy days for you, and you know you'd be more successful if you read on Tuesdays, then read on Tuesdays! Simply pick the day that works best for you and make it a priority. Or if it works best for you to read the week's passage in small sections every day of the week (instead of a large passage one day) - then do it that way!

You can also pick how often you'd like to contribute a devotional/study/thoughts. I would still like to see a regular commitment for accountability, but how often is up to you (once a week, twice a month or once a month, etc).

So often we (especially first-borns, perfectionists, etc) tend to have an all or nothing mentality. If I can't do it perfectly, if I can't succeed 100%, if I can't be the best, then I'm just not going to even try. Ladies (or any men that read this!), that's not from the Lord. If you didn't have a regular Bible reading/devotional habit before - then any commitment is better than nothing. You have to start somewhere, and who cares if you start small? So long as you start! Your efforts will be rewarded. You will draw closer to Him. You will reflect Him to those around you. And you will be able to be more discerning. There is no downside here!

So - who's with me now?!

Details on how I think this will work (if anyone has suggestions to improve this process, feel free to chime in).....

I will create a new blog for this venture, and all people who want to be involved and regularly contributing, I will email an invitation with the rights to post to this blog. As guest posters you will be able to post your own devotional directly to the blog, but you will not have rights to edit other posts or to change the blog layout/design.

Every day I will post the scripture references as will as a direct link to Bible Gateway where you would be able to read those scripture references. I'm not sure if I'll only link the NIV translation, or if I will provide a few options (it's easy enough for you to change once you get there anyway, so I'll likely just do the one option). I will try to post at the same time every day (probably 9am) so that everyone knows when they can come on and read/post their own comments. (This means I'll likely actually be writing out my posts in advance and schedule posting them appropriately).

And of course, everyone is welcome to post in the comments their own thoughts on the day's readings and/or devotional.

Bible Reading Plan - and beyond!

I am 16 shorts days away from completing my goal of reading through the Bible in One Year. Although, to be perfectly honest, I'm actually behind by 4 days, so I have a little catch up reading to do I'm totally caught up and I WILL be done by Dec 31st, no doubt about it.

My cousin Tammi has been posting a lot about discernment on her blog lately. And the biggest thing that has struck me is the NEED to be in the Word. Reading it, and studying it.

Which brings me to my own personal decision/conviction, as well as a challenge for anyone out there in bloggyland that would like to take me up on it!

I want to read through the Bible in one year again this year. Last year I followed a plan which had a reading from the OT, the NT, Proverbs and Psalms every day. There was also a blog that I followed sometimes, which had insights on each passage.

This year I'm choosing between two different plans. I either want to do a Chronological reading of the Bible (reading it through in the order the events actually took place), or this one which divides up the readings by having a different "type" of book read regularly on each day of the week (the Law is on Mondays, History on Tuesdays, Psalms on Wednesdays, Poetry on Thursdays, Prophecy on Fridays, Gospels on Saturdays and Epistles on Sundays). Both have their pros and cons. But neither (as far as I know) have a blog that follows each day's readings and provides insights on the passages.

Which brings me to my challenge.

I would like to start a blog for exactly that. I will post the passage every day. But I know that I won't do a detailed post every day (that would be unrealistic). I would commit to at least one or two days a week. I would probably do it in a devotional format, likely following the SOAP format (Scripture, Observation, Application, Prayer). Sometimes I may look up something that I don't understand. Sometimes I may comment on a passage that just jumped out at me. It boils down to this - I want to commit to not only reading the passages, but to studying them. And this will help to keep me accountable.

I'm wondering if anybody would like to commit to doing this together with me?

Think about it, pray about it, and let me know!

Consider yourself challenged!