Did you actually complete those goals?

The Lord is king! He is robed in majesty. Indeed, the Lord is robed in majesty and armed with strength.
The world stands firm and cannot be shaken. Your royal laws cannot be changed. Your reign, O Lord, is holy forever and ever. (Psalm 93:1,5 NLT)

As the new year brings many to consider their goals for the upcoming days, it might be that some look back, seeing a few defeats, goals not achieved in the past year. Did you accomplish all you set out to conquer, overcome, or make habitual in your life last year? I sure didn't! The weight still went up and down like a yoyo. The cupboards and closets may have been gone through more than once, but did they stay tidy? Nope...decluttering still needs to be done. One thing to keep in mind if you are feeling a little 'down' over not accomplishing all you set before you in the last year is that God hasn't changed from one year to the next. His laws don't change - his Word remains sure forever. Since we have such an unchangeable God, we can rest assured what needed 'changing' in our lives last year can still be a goal for this year. Ask him what should be realistically set before you as goals for the present year, then trust him to walk with you to see those accomplishments through to finality. 

Sometimes the most telling part of having unachieved goals is that they were likely quite unrealistic, or perhaps we set way too many of them, imagining ourselves as 'able to achieve' much more than we were actually capable of addressing at one time. There are times when I undertake something like relining the shelf paper in the cabinets in the kitchen, only to realize that by the time I remove everything, take off the old, measure and cut the new, then squirm my way into those tight corners to get it all smoothed out, my kitchen looks like a bomb went off in it! I get overwhelmed by the clutter, find myself going through a decluttering process, making boxes for the local thrift store, and now the kitchen morphs into this huge project that extends to the garage because I need some place to store a few things there that will help the kitchen cabinets stay tidier, and so on. You get the point, don't you? We sometimes bite off way more than we can chew. Goals need to be realistic. God's strength to help us accomplish them will never dwindle, but our physical or emotional strength may waver more than a little!

Set one goal. Only one. Then get alone with God and work on that one until it finished. Once that is accomplished, ask him to help you define the next, and focus on that one through completion. As the adage goes, "Rome wasn't conquered in a day", so it is with our life goals. We get overwhelmed by the impossibilities when all we see is the 'clutter' of all those goals we set. Maybe we 'declutter' our goal-setting a bit and let God, in all his strength and wisdom, help us with just one. One well accomplished goal is better than a thousand half-hearted completed or left unachieved. Just sayin!