5 Steps to Your Best Year Ever
by Drenda Keesee
What is standing between you and the life you want?
I want to see you have your best year yet! So I put together a list of five useful tips I believe will help YOU live the life God created you to live.
Here we go…
1. Pray
Ask God for guidance. Waiting on God’s guidance and timing are just as important as knowing what your God-designed purpose is. Pray for patience as you wait to see your vision become a reality, and trust that God is preparing you in the meantime.
I believe you’re called to do something specific and to make a lasting impact. I want to see you reach greater heights, but the key to walking in your full potential is to spend time in God’s presence.
When you come into His presence, you will see life from His perspective. His glory comes on you, and He changes you from the inside out.
Goals without God are like boats without sails… You can go further faster with God by your side!
2. Set Goals
One of the most important steps you need to take is to write out your goals for this year. You can’t get to your goals without first knowing what they are. But when you write your goals down, don’t let the world get in your ear.
Colossians 3:2 tells you to “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things” (NIV).
Your goals should reflect your faith. Resist the urge to downsize your dreams to fit the world’s expectations. While the world is saying, “This is impossible,” the Bible tells us, “With God all things are possible.” Rely on God’s strength, and you will see miracle after miracle take place in your life.
I encourage you to put your goals somewhere you will see them every day. It’s easier to be accountable for your dreams when you see them daily.
3. Make Amends
Are you withholding forgiveness from someone who has hurt you? The enemy has so many tactics, and anger is one of his favorite tools. Too often, we listen to his lies and let him distract us. We turn our eyes to him instead of to Jesus. When we do that, we hand over our freedom.
Anger is a prison, but forgiveness is your key to the prison door.
Matthew 6:12 tells us God will “forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”
Without forgiveness, you can’t be free to live and love the way Christ wants you to. You cannot truly come into God’s presence and be successful in your faith journey with anger in your heart.
4. Resist the Urge to “Be Liked”
Every dreamer and visionary encounters roadblocks, and that includes naysayers, doubters, and those who are envious of your courage and vision.
I always had big dreams, but, for years, I fell victim to people-pleasing. I lived my life relying on the approval of others to feel loved and accepted. I want to encourage you to cast down every thought that doesn’t match up with God’s Word.
Resistance doesn’t always mean you are doing something wrong. Sometimes big ideas scare people. If you know you have a God-designed dream, His Word is the word that matters.
Don’t quit. Don’t give up on what God has told you to do. Don’t back down. Stay in agreement with what heaven says about you and your situation.
5. Count Your blessings
Every night before you go to bed, name five things that you are grateful for. You can write them down or say them out loud, whatever works best for you. Ending the day with positive thoughts will stop the cycle of negative thoughts.
Adopting an attitude of gratitude is a building block of success.
It’s urgent that you understand that your thoughts are extremely powerful tools.
God created positive thoughts to help you love others, to laugh, to motivate you to work toward your goals, push through circumstances, and chase after your dreams.
Joyce Meyer once said, “You cannot have a positive life and a negative mind.”
Getting closer to your goals is impossible with a negative mindset. Your ability to overcome mistakes depends on your willingness to think positive and be grateful for what you have! No matter what you’ve been through, it’s never too late to pick yourself up and try again.
~Drenda
ps…Are you looking for a good church? Be sure and listen on Saturday evening or catch the 3 services on Sunday for Faith Life Church!
Drenda Keesee’s contagious zeal and humorous personal experiences help make her ministry of spiritual, emotional, and relational wholeness one that will bless your life and spark a new fire in your spirit.
A wife of over 30 years and a mother of five children, Drenda has ministered at churches, seminars, and conferences, and through the mediums of television and radio, for more than 20 years.
Her books, The New Vintage Family, Better Than You Think, and She Gets It are available wherever books are sold. In these heartfelt books, Drenda shares her personal journey and the life lessons that have brought her to where she is today, as well as practical answers that all people need to live a joyful life.
Drenda and her husband Gary founded Faith Life Now, a ministry designed to spread the message of freedom in the areas of finances, faith, marriage, and family. Tune in for their weekly messages here. Faith Life Now hosts conferences worldwide and sponsors both Fixing the Money Thing, which Drenda co-hosts with her husband Gary and Drenda.
Through their own life experiences, the Keesee’s have found the principles from God’s Word to be powerful and effective. At one point, Drenda was a young, suicidal feminist with no hope of ever being “good enough” for her own standards of perfection. She never wanted the “inconvenience” of a husband or children, and she was on her own path to success. But the stress of trying to achieve perfection and perform for love left her broken and used. She had success, but it was nothing compared to the pain and loneliness it had also brought.
That’s when God got a hold of her heart. It was there—at her lowest point—that she found the One who accepted and loved her, faults and all. Since that transformation, Drenda has had a passion to reach women who find themselves where she once was.
She married Gary after attending college, and there she found herself in a personal boot camp of sorts. She says, “I cried and told God, ‘I can do anything but be a wife and mother.’” She committed to learning how to do it God’s way. Through the many years of raising their children and struggling to make ends meet, Drenda learned from their mistakes. “I didn’t know how to be a wife and mother, but God saved our marriage, taught us how to parent our children for success, showed us how to have financial success, and then the irony of all ironies, He called us to ministry.” It’s truly because of these life experiences that Drenda can now share so many insightful principles for people who are now going through the same struggles.
