Reaching That Matters

When you reach your goal will you have reached a goal that really matters?

For many adults, most of life is lived without setting goals. It seems that most of the goals are poorly defined and of short-term value. In my experience, most people don’t set clear financial goals, have no parenting goals, and set goals focused on things like health and exercise.

Oftentimes the goals are set with unrealistic expectations of the satisfaction they expect from achieving the goals that they do set. If we are to reach, attain, get to, and achieve something of significance and long-term value, then we need to first determine what really matters and what lasts.

Setting the goal is important. Picking the right goal even more so.

Reaching without Wasting Life Involves Right Motivations

If we reach well, we don’t waste our lives. Joe Rigney knows the “secret” of that endeavor. He says, “For twenty years, I’ve resonated deeply with the ministry of John Piper. Spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ. Don’t waste your life. Find your holy ambition. Over and over again, biblical exhortations like these have stirred me up with a vision of God and life and ministry that has shaped who I am and the choices I’ve made.” DesiringGod Ungodly Ambition

A goal without a plan is just a wish.

Rigney reminds us that God does not need us. A God who needs us would be a rather weak and desperate tyrant. We need Him and we need to recognize him as he has revealed himself.

The best way to do that is to pray and ask him for understanding and wisdom and to “trust and obey.” The best way to reach the end of life knowing your life was not wasted is four-fold: 1) Know God as he has revealed himself in scripture; 2) Have a relationship with God based on his clear call to believe that he exists and calls us to a life of faith through the finished work of his Son, Jesus; 3) Obey what he commands, and then confess our failures and sins when we don’t obey; and 4) Trust him. Believe his promises and know that even when we are weak, he is strong for us.

How to Identify a Follower of Jesus

A person who trusts God desires unity with others, a deeper knowledge of the Son of God, maturity, and a Christ-likeness that images God well in a world that really needs to know the Creator of the universe. Paul said it this way to the church in Ephesus:

“He (Jesus) who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things. And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.” Ephesians 4:10-16

Ephesians 4:10-16

Five Minute Friday

This post is part of the weekly Five-Minute Friday link-up.

All scripture passages are from the English Standard Version except as otherwise noted.