Welcome 2010!

So I definitely did not mean to take a month-long hiatus from writing, but unfortunately that is exactly what happened. I blame the craziness of the holidays for that. I will also re-cap the end of the fall semester on Wednesday, but thought I'd write about the new year and what I have planned.

A lot of people have themes or resolutions or whatever you want to call it for every new year - some attainable goal they set for themselves as a benchmark that they work towards. I thought it would be a good idea for me as well but I had no idea where to start. How do you sum up all you want to accomplish in a year into one pithy statement?? I thought choosing a theme verse(s) would be best to encapsulate my goal(s), but again, I had a hard time trying to whittle it down to just one verse. Then it came to me. I was walking in my neighborhood last week and it tends to be hill-y in many places, making running/walking/crawling difficult to do. As I was walking up the first hill and finding myself out of breath and clutching my chest (odd, because I can run/walk on a treadmill for an hour but on a street I last about 2 minutes...) a thought came to me. Just as training for a marathon helps one go farther in their runs, so does spiritual training help one overcome the "hills" of life and be able to walk further without stopping for breath. The idea that if you only go so far in training yourself spiritually, you'll run out of breath and only last for one, two, maybe three hills and then stop, but that if you train yourself as you would for an athletic event, you'll not only be in better "spiritual shape" but you'll be able to weather those steep hills when you come to them. I then thought of some verses my pastor had used in church earlier that week and they seemed to fit perfectly:

"Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly, I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize." --1 Corinthians 9:24-27

I chose this passage as my theme for the new year, to not only get in shape physically and continue my workouts at the gym, but also to get more in shape spiritually too - to train myself to become more like Christ. I plan on doing this by continuing to get in God's Word and working on my prayer life and memorizing Scripture because I really need to work on that. There are of course more areas I intend to work on but those are the biggies.

I will also reference this passage throughout this year and see how I'm doing so stay posted! I hope you're having a great start to 2010 and let's train ourselves and say no to all the obstacles that hinder us from getting closer in relationship to Christ!