How are you doing with your goals for the new year? It is just the first week but how quickly we can forget and fail in the very areas we resolutely said we would do better in! Do not be discouraged. The year is a marathon, not a sprint…and you are just getting warmed up.

The first steps of a run are the hardest. Keep moving. Push yourself. At some point you reach a rhythm. You find your stride. This is true in all of life.

Most people never reach their goal because they are not hard enough on themselves. In our age of comfort and ease we have become enamored with convenience. This is never the way to victory.

The Apostle Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 9:24-27,

Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain. And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible. I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air: But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.

You have to work at it.

Great athletes are at their best when they are under pressure. Business people are most effective when reaching for some definite goal. This principle is true in all of life.

George Whitfield once said, ” I am never better than when I am on the full stretch for God.”

We have enjoyed some down time over the holidays, but now it is time to get “on the full stretch for God.” Refuse to allow laziness and lethargy to define your days. Press forward.

The first letters in goals are GO.