Steve Watters: From resolutions to priorities

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Tuesday, December 31st. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next, starting the new year well. Almost a third of Americans say they’ll make resolutions or set goals for 2025. But WORLD Opinions contributor Steve Watters encourages a resolution that goes beyond those we often fail to keep.

STEVE WATTERS: A recent YouGov survey found 58% of Americans under 30 say they make resolutions, but less than a quarter of those older than 30 do.

Drive Research speculates that the over-30 crowd may have already met many of their life goals. Those who haven’t have likely grown cautious after failed resolutions in the past. One study reports less than 10 percent of those making resolutions keep them.

My own experience matches that data.

In our first year of marriage, my wife and I got away for a New Year’s Eve stay at a family cottage in Michigan. As we looked out over a frozen lake covered with snow, the fire popping in the big rock fireplace, we were inspired to dream up a new young adults ministry that we launched the following year.

The next Christmas, I gave her an engraved door knocker and announced optimistically, “Let’s accessorize this with a house.” On New Year’s Eve, we headed back to the cottage for fresh inspiration—and in the process decided to add the goal of starting a family. A year later, we skipped the cottage and had our planning time in our newly built home, with our two-week old son. This big goal thing was really paying off.

The next December we went back to the cottage and tried to dream up some bigger goals—like “start a new business” and “write a book.” We also added goals for exercise, reading, vacations, and major purchases. This time we climbed up onto the kitchen counter and hid the list on a ledge above the sink. We thought it would be fun to go back the next year and see how much we had accomplished.

But it wasn’t fun when we reviewed the list a year later. We had missed our big goals as well as many of the new smaller goals we had added.

We headed out from the cottage to a local restaurant to try to rally and do better on a plan for the next year. After we got our two-year-old son busy with crackers and crayons we turned over a paper placemat and started jotting down our goals, including preparing for another baby due in two months. As we struggled to keep our son occupied, we realized that one reason it was hard to achieve new goals was because previous ones—like growing our family—were making it difficult to add anything else.

We also realized that some of the objectives we had added may not have been worth pursuing. In the spirit of self-improvement, we had taken on a lot of to-do items that ultimately made our lives busier rather than better.

Back at the cottage, after our son went to sleep, we paused our goal setting and instead spent time praying—asking God to show us what he would have us prioritize and to help us do what was most important.

That was a turning point for us. We still believed it was important to plan for the new year as a couple and to be willing to sacrifice for shared priorities, but our focus shifted from setting big goals to making prayerful resolutions.

That night, we started a new list of priorities that has guided our planning each year since. We came up with things like: seek to know and do God’s will; do work that has eternal value; and steward our lives in ways that serve others and glorify God.

Praying about those priorities each year has prompted some big new goals at times—but more often it has helped us bring fresh resolve to the commitments we already have in our marriage, family, and church. That has also helped us protect important investments like family discipleship and teaching 5th grade Sunday School. Opportunities that might have otherwise gotten squeezed out by work, school, and extracurricular activities.

That year we were also prompted to start adding a guiding verse to our annual plan and to display it on our refrigerator throughout the year. Our verse for the year ahead comes from Paul’s prayer to the Thessalonians

…we always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power.

That’s a big goal we know God is prepared to help us all keep.

I’m Steve Watters.

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