One of the biggest challenges I’ve had as a Christian adult is matching my daily activities to my faith values. You may be familiar if you’re noticing a lot of everyday “busyness” with a lack of true purpose behind those zillion to-dos. In your heart you want to feed the poor, take care of your neighbors, and be the hands and feet of Jesus. But in reality, you spend your spare time scrolling (overstimulated) and spare money buying things at midnight online you don’t really need!
Do you ever find yourself wondering – Am I truly aligned towards my biggest and most important God-given opportunities!
For a long time I thought about how I could better align my time management and spending with my beliefs and values. Once completing this strategy, I made major changes in the way I planned for life!
Here’s how I did it:
1. Zero in on The Mission.
As a Christian, I identified my top priority for putting faith into action. Depending on your faith values it might be:
· Charity
· Volunteering
· Sharing Encouragement
· Ministry
2. I Identified my Personal Values. Most people believe they have good values and may not be aware that personal values and faith values might be misaligned. What they don’t realize is they have conflicting values that produce two different sets of desired behaviors and tension in their daily lives. On the other hand, alignment between personal values and faith values can create synergy and aligned action.
Here are common personal values:
· Wealth
· Achievement
· Honesty
· Influence
· Loyalty
· Integrity
3. Perform a Gap Analysis. So I took some time to honestly my personal values and how that aligned (or didn’t!) with the faith values I had written down. It helped me to evaluate how I was spending my time and money and whether my actions were value-based.
When I performed a gap analysis of my life I looked at some of the things Jesus said about how we should spend our time and money and noticed there were gaps. Lots and lots of gaps! So I began to create detailed action plans to achieve my goals.
Here’s an easy template you can use:
4. Courageously Begin Your Action Plan. The reason I say “courageously” is because the plans that I came up with felt daunting. The fear I felt about actually accomplishing any of those goals is real! I often feel choked like my stomach made its way to my throat somehow.
Like when we planted a church…
And launched our first business…
And made generous donations by faith…
And boldly spoke up for good causes…
But after doing this exercise and realizing that by going forward I’m actually lining up my daily calendar with faith values and personal values it gave me a mental boost and “There’s No Going Back!” mindset. After completing my strategic plan, I feel privileged to have an opportunity to make an impact and effect positive changes for the best reasons.
Having a strategic plan for your life will clarify the most important areas to spend your time, money and resources. You will be able to home in on how to make the most headway on your valuable dreams and create specific actions to take.
What amazing visions do you have for your life – and what action are you taking towards them? I would love to know!