There are six common areas for goal setting: finances, relationships, health, career, intellectual, and spiritual. Your spiritual growth goals are arguably the most important. Afterall, the state of your spiritual life impacts everything else!
This year, consider setting a goal or two for your spiritual growth. Wondering what kind of goals to set? Keep reading for spiritual goal ideas that will help you intentionally invest in your spiritual growth.
What are Spiritual Goals
First things first, let’s define a spiritual goal. A spiritual goal is any kind of goal that supports your spiritual growth. A spiritual goal is usually set with the intention of deepening and strengthening your relationship with God. Common spiritual goals often include prayer, scripture reading, community service, etc.
Why Spiritual Goals are Important
Spiritual goals are important because they help us grow. It’s really easy to become stagnant in our spiritual growth if we aren’t intentional. Spiritual goals can help us resist stagnation and be intentional about growing closer to our creator.
As we grow spiritual we impact the world around us. Spiritual growth goals help us lead lives that reflect the light and love of Christ in everything we do. Christ-like light and love blesses everyone we come into contact with and changes that atmosphere around us.
Ready to set spiritual goals of your own?
Spiritual Goals to Set this Year
Below are a few examples of spiritual goals. The spiritual goals below are broken into categories. Explore each category and identify a goal or two you are interested in pursuing this year.
Scripture Reading
Scripture reading goals encompass any goal that has to do with reading the word of God. You might set a goal to read your Bible every day, memorize verses, or establish a quiet time routine you love.
Example goals:
Reading frequency
- Read the entire Bible in a year
- Read the Bible for at least 10 minutes a day
- Read the Bible every day of the week
Scripture memorization
- Memorize 1 verse a month
- Memorize 2 books of the Bible by the end of the year
Quiet time
- Create a quiet routine I love
- Meditate on God’s Word 5 minutes a day
- Download or purchase a devotional I’m excited about
- Study a book of the Bible or Christian book
- Spend intentional time in silence, stillness, or solitude
There are so many goals you could set when it comes to scripture reading. Use a goal listed above or create one of your own to grow your faith through scripture reading.
Prayer
Prayer is another pillar of our spiritual health that benefits from intentional goals. Just imagine the ways growing in prayer could impact your life: connecting with God more frequently, hearing God more clearly, the thrill of knowing a prayer has been answered. Consider setting an intentional goal or two for your prayer life.
Example goals:
- Start a prayer journal
- Pray for a specific person, situation, issue, or thing until it’s answered
- Pray for x minutes a day
- Praying x days a week
Again, prayer goals aren’t limited to the examples above! Get creative when it comes to crafting goals that expand your prayer life.
Discipleship
One of the most overlooked categories of spiritual goals is discipleship. A disciple is someone who follows Christ and leads others to do the same. It’s important for our spiritual growth to be led by disciples that are more mature than us and, as disciples ourselves, lead others.
Example goals:
- Seek out an older, wiser disciple to mentor, coach or spiritually direct me
- Meet with my spiritual mentor, coach, or director at least once a month
- Identify a young disciple to mentor
- Start a group for people who want to be discipled
Discipleship is a really important part of growing spiritually. If you aren’t excited about a scripture reading or prayer goal, discipleship might be the category of goal that you need!
Christ-like Community
Community goals are similar to discipleship but they are a bit broader. Community goals can include discipleship goals like finding a spiritual mentor, coach, or director but they go beyond one-on-one or small group connection.
Example goals:
- Lead a Bible study once a month
- Find a church community I love
- Participate in an act of community service once a month
- Meet a friend for coffee once a week
We were made to do life in community. While building and serving community may not seem like an obvious way to grow spiritually it can’t be denied that doing life in community helps us lead lives that reflect the love of Christ.
Other
Let’s explore a few spiritual growth goals that don’t fall into the categories above. These goals are just as important and will still have an impact on your spiritual life!
Example goals:
- Read 6 books this year that will grow my faith
- Unfollow social media accounts, refrain from watching shows or listening to music that sow sin in your life
- Fast once a quarter
- Explore creative ways to worship weekly
- Participate in communion once a week
- Go on a mission trip
- Start tithing x dollars a month
- Share Jesus with 5 people who don’t know him
While it isn’t an exhaustive list, the goals above are a great place to start intentionally investing in your spiritual growth. Pick 2-3 goals from any of the categories above and keep reading to find out how to set effective spiritual growth goals.
How to set spiritual growth goals
Start your spiritual growth goals by praying. Ask God to speak into the goals you have on your heart and mind. Welcome God’s guidance as you select goals that will help you grow spiritually.
Next, pick a goal or two that will challenge you but isn’t totally impossible. Goals should stretch you beyond your current capabilities but they shouldn’t be impossible to achieve.
Wondering how to set a goal that’s challenging enough but not impossible? Use the S.M.A.R.T. method to set your goals. The S.M.A.R.T. method is a goal setting strategy that will help you set clear, realistic spiritual goals.
SMART is an acronym that stands for specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and timely. Each letter in the acronym stands for an element of effective goal setting.
Specific – Make your goal as specific as possible.
Measurable – How will you know that you are making progress in your goal?
Actionable – You should be able to take action on your goal. A goal that is dependent on other people or factors largely outside of your control is not actionable.
Realistic – Goal setting is exciting, make sure that in all of your enthusiasm you are setting a goal that is realistic for you.
Timely – Your goal should have a start and end date. Take a moment to determine when you will start working on your goal and establish a deadline.
Go back to the goals you wrote down. Revise them using the SMART method. Make sure that your goals are specific, measurable, actionable, relevant, and time bound.
Read more about setting effective goals here
Happy goal setting!
Ready to amp up your spiritual growth? Pick 2-3 goals from the list above or craft some goals of your own, (remember to make them S.M.A.R.T). Whether you borrow from the list above or come up with your own goals, you’re bound to grow this year!
Need some help setting your goals? Download my free printable spiritual goals worksheet.
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