As you prepare for the new year, look through the list below and choose three favorites. Consider asking someone close to you to do the same. Then share your top three with each other, answering the following questions and concluding your time in prayer:

• Why are these your favorites?
• What implications do they have for 2019?
• How will you do what you desire? What is your plan? (In answering this, try to be as specific, measurable, and tangible as you can.)
• How can I help you succeed? (Again, try to be as specific, measurable, and tangible as you can.)

 

“The only person who likes change is a wet baby!” -Mark Twain

“In order to better the future, we must disturb the present.” -Catherine Booth

“The secret of change is to focus all your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” -Socrates

“Be the change you want to see.”

“A bend in the road is not the end of the road unless you fail to make the turn.”

“If you’re not riding the wave of change you’ll find yourself beneath it.”

“What seems like only a ripple today can become the wave of the future.”

“Without change there can be no breakthroughs.  Without breakthroughs there can be no future.”

“Remember this: When you’re through changing, you’re through.”

“Some dream of worthy accomplishments while others stay awake and do them.”

“The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.” -M. Scott Peck

“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.” -Abraham Lincoln

“You can judge your age by the amount of pain you feel when you come in contact with a new idea.” -Pearl S. Buck

“Observe always that everything is the result of change, and get used to thinking that there is nothing Nature loves so well as to change existing forms and make new ones like them.” -Marcus Aurelius

“Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections but instantly set about remedying them—every day begin the task anew.” -Saint Francis de Sales

“Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.” -Benjamin Franklin

“If you don’t like something change it; if you can’t change it, change the way you think about it.” -Mary Engelbreit

“Die when I may, I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.” -Abraham Lincoln

“Fear is the cheapest room in the house. I would like to see you living in better conditions.” -Hafiz of Persia

“If we fall, we don’t need self-recrimination or blame or anger – we need a reawakening of our intention and a willingness to re-commit, to be whole-hearted once again.” -Sharon Salzberg

“People change and forget to tell each other.” -Lillian Hellman

“Loyalty to a petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.” -Mark Twain

“Time changes everything except something within us which is always surprised by change.” -Thomas Hardy

“Become a student of change. It is the only thing that will remain constant.” -Anthony J. D’Angelo

“The most important thing to remember is this: To be ready at any moment to give up what you are for what you might become.” -W. E. B. DuBois

“If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.” -General Eric Shinseki

“To suppose that whatever God requires of us we have the power of ourselves to do, is to make the cross and grace of Jesus Christ of none effect.” -John Owen

 

May His grace and peace be yours in fullest measure. Happy New Year!