A paper I wrote once that helped me... and therefore my marriage

Part of having a fulfilled life is creating and accomplishing goals. Goals are what drive us to succeed. They are what create in us a desire to change for the better. Goals are a way for us to be self-reliant and make ourselves better. This semester was a great opportunity for me to set a lofty goal of creating a rule of life. This rule of life is an outline of how I will act, create, feel, work, play, and live with the goal of accomplishing God’s will in my life. This paper will outline what my rule of life is and how it will affect my life and ministry.

Verse

One thing that I found the need to do when crafting my rule of life is have a guiding verse that I use to dwell on and internalize. The verse I chose is Micah 6:8 which states, “He has shown you, oh man, what is good and what the Lord requires of you. But to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.” This verse has been one that has stayed with me throughout my life. It encompasses a very important aspect of my life and ministry and that is that God has given me all that I need through scripture to have a fulfilled life. He wants me to be just, merciful and humble throughout my life and that is what I desire as well.

Artifact of Worship

My guitar is something that reminds me of my commitment to Christ. Every time I pick it up, there is something supernatural that happens. I want to be a better person. I want to show the world how great God is and I want to make beautiful music to glorify his name.

Core Values,

Core Values are also and important aspect of my rule of life. To be able to adequately be a testament of Christ, I must have clearly defined core values. There are many that I would like to include in my rule of life but I have narrowed down three that I think are the most important.

                The first is to make love central to every relationship I have. This goes from work to friends to family. I must be willing to love everyone I come in contact with and be a loving person. The second is to not tolerate sin within my own life or the lives of my friends and family. Sin is something that too often gets ignored because we don’t want to hurt people’s feelings. No more. The third is let the Bible guide my beliefs, don’t let my beliefs guide the Bible. There are controversial aspects of scripture and I think that they are there for a reason. My job is not to change it to suite my own whims.

Self-Care goals  

These are the things that I will do to take care of my body, mind, and soul in order to lead a Christ-like fulfilled life. I must take care of my spiritual wellbeing. I will do so by making sure I stay in the community of believers and make Biblical study a priority. My family will also be a part of my spiritual life and they will be included in my Biblical study. My wife and I will strive to grow closer to God when we are together as well as apart, focusing on reading the Bible, praying with one another, leading each other in righteousness and refusing to accept sin in each other’s lives. I will take care of my body by eating right, getting enough sleep, exercising, and avoiding addictive things which harm my body. I will also strive to seek council with friends and family to help me discern how to best administer all of these goals to myself. In ministry, I will be going to the governing bodies of the church regularly with questions, concerns or issues that I find in ministry as well as meeting with a friend outside of ministry to receive objective advice which negates the bias that a friend within the church would have.

Vital Behaviors

These are things that I must do on a weekly basis in order to remain healthy. I have three that I absolutely must accomplish every week. First I must have a date night at least once per week with my wife. Second I must take time to create art every week. Whether this is music, painting, computer graphics, or photography, there must be an aspect of creativity in my week. The final one is to get at least seven to eight hours of sleep every night to function well the next day. When I miss sleep, I feel the pain of tiredness for the whole week and I feel that I cannot accomplish all I should. If I can accomplish all of these I will be able to stay stable for accomplishing the rest of my goals which are not as vital but no less important.

Accountability/Conclusion

Accomplishing everything I need to do to stay fulfilled and effective in ministry will be tough. The one thing that I can guarantee is that I will need accountability to do it. This will involve meeting with someone on a weekly basis to talk about how my vital behaviors are going and what fears I have going into every week. I will meet with a person who has no connection with my church or my family so that they will be the most objective possible. If I can meet weekly with this person, I will be able to be held accountable for accomplishing all of my values, goals and vital behaviors.