In my two previous posts (October 9--What Will Make
You Happy? & October 15—Is Your Goal From God or You?) I’ve been exploring
the theme of GOALS. In this post I
want to consider the importance of having God-given goals. If our goals are
based on what we want, we’re aiming far to low in life. God has bigger dreams
for us than we could ever conceive of for ourselves. There’s this strong
influence in each of our lives called PRIDE that causes us to think that we
know what’s best. We think we know what will lead us to happiness. It’s the
reason why we ignore or disregard God’s commands and His direction, to do our
own thing. Years ago I heard “ego” defined as “edging God out.” Sometimes when
we’re defining sin we point to specific actions and activities, but at the end
of the day sin is us thinking we know better than God.
The worst form of deception is possibly the
different ways we deceive ourselves. The Prophet Jeremiah offered this comment regarding
self-deception: "The human heart is most deceitful and desperately
wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?” Jeremiah 17:9 (NLT) Given our ability
to deceive it makes me wonder why anyone would ever trust their heart. The
reason? Pride. One time, while I was dealing with a group of desperately
clueless people, the question occurred to me: Does someone who is clueless have a clue they don’t have a clue?
The answer is: “No!” Pride and the ability to deceive oneself causes people to live
in spiritual blindness. It’s like a fog shrouds their capacity to understand
what’s true and to discern the right steps to take. Pride will always lead us down a wrong path and cause us to set our sights on wrong goals.
PROBLEMS, on the other hand, will make us want to
give up on our goals or to not even seek God-given goals. When the Old
Testament character, Job, was going through his severe ordeal he said, “…I do not have the strength to endure. I
do not have a goal that encourages me to carry on.” (Job 6:11 NLT) All of
us have been in that place where we’ve sunk so low we have to look up to see
the bottom. It’s hard to keep moving forward, so being motivated towards a goal
seems impossible. This seems to be exactly where Job was in his thinking. And
yet Job knew that having a God-given goal was the very encouragement he needed
to be motivated to “carry on.” Don’t let problems determine the direction of
your life.
Some people struggle with sin far more than they
need to because they have failed to identify and pursue God-given goals.
Some people get stuck in a miserable place in their
lives, dominated by depressing, defeating thoughts because they can’t see
beyond their circumstances.
Don’t allow
PRIDE to make you think you know better than God, and to settle for goals far
below the potential and gifting God has placed within you.
Don’t allow
PROBLEMS to so overwhelm you, you’re unable to believe and hope that the best
is yet to come.
Be like the
apostle Paul: “So I run straight to the goal with purpose in every step. I am
not like a boxer who misses his punches.”
1 Corinthians 9:26 NLT
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