A Monthly Faith Goals Checklist You Can Print

A month is the right length for a faith goal. Long enough to build something, short enough that you can see the end from the beginning.

Proverbs 3:5 says to trust in the LORD with all your heart, and not to lean on your own understanding. A month of written goals is not at odds with that. Writing them down is how you stop renegotiating them at six in the morning, which is when your own understanding is least reliable. Here is the checklist. Copy it onto a page, choose three, and leave the rest for another month.

The Twelve Items

1. Read one book of the Bible from beginning to end.

2. Memorize four verses, one a week.

3. Pray with one other person, three times.

4. Keep a written prayer list and update it weekly.

5. Give something away that costs you something.

6. Have one honest conversation you have been avoiding.

7. Write down one answered prayer.

8. Attend everything you said you would attend.

9. Take one full day without a screen.

10. Encourage three people specifically, by name.

11. Read one chapter a day of a book that is not the Bible.

12. Sit with God for twenty minutes without asking for anything.

Choose Three

Three is enough to be a real month and few enough to remember without checking.

Pick one that is about input, one about other people, and one that costs you something. A month made only of reading goals grows a narrower person than you were hoping for.

Choose them at the start rather than drifting into them. A month you did not decide about will be filled by whatever asks loudest, and very little of that will be on this list.

Write the Dates In

A goal with no date attached becomes a wish by the second week. Put the day beside each one.

Pray with one other person on the fourth, the fourteenth and the twenty fifth. Now it is an appointment rather than an intention.

Put the dates in the same calendar you actually use for everything else. A separate spiritual calendar sounds tidy and gets checked half as often.

Put It Where You Will See It

Inside a cabinet door, on the fridge, or taped inside the cover of your Bible.

The checklist has to be in your eye line during the ordinary week. One kept in a planner you open on Sundays will be reviewed twice and then forgotten.

Handwrite it rather than printing it if you can. Something about copying the twelve items out makes the three you circle feel chosen rather than assigned.

The Last Day Review

On the final day of the month, take five minutes. Which three did you choose. Which are done. What got in the way.

Do not carry unfinished items forward automatically. Ask whether each one still matters, and let some of them go without ceremony.

Keep the finished pages. Twelve of these at the end of a year is a fuller account of your life than any journal you would have kept on purpose.

Copy It Out Tonight

Write the twelve items on a page, circle three, and put a date beside each of the three.

The month you are in has days left in it. Begin with those rather than waiting for the first.