One of the challenges that I have is sorting out all the ideas, dreams, and compulsions that are constantly popping into my mind to try and determine which ones are from God. The first step for me is to wait until I “fall in love” with a particular idea. It starts popping into my mind with greater frequency and I start day dreaming about it. The second step is I write the dream down with as much detail as I can and then I put it away for one month. If I start to think about it I treat the thought like I would an immoral, covetous, or bitter thought, I replace it with a scripture verse that I have memorized. After one month I get it out and read it. In about 90% of the times I do this, when I read it my impression is negative. Words like stupid, waste of time, crazy, come to mind, so I just forget it. But occasionally when I get it out and read it my first impression is “Wow”, “let’s do it”. I then begin to write a lot, plan, set steps of action and then write a goal. Most of the time the new dream will require a lot of research which is probably my favorite part of any new venture. I enjoy learning new stuff and when it is attached to a new and exciting dream I get extra motivated to read, look for information on the Internet, go to seminars, and talk to people who have some experience. Way back in 1987 I had a thought that kept popping into my mind of planting a daughter church. It was crazy because we were still a small church with lots of problems. I wrote out as much as I could come up with which wasn’t much because I really had no clue how to do this. I went to a seminar in Southern California that Peter Wagner taught on church planting and bought a couple of books. This particular idea was so crazy and scary that I worked on it for several years before I told anybody about it. In 1990 I had it all worked out, put it in writing and began sharing it with those that would need to agree to it and help if it were to happen. The projected date for the first of 10 daughter churches was Easter of 2000, 10 years away, with another following every 2 years. That is pretty close to what has happened.

Because we are created in the image and likeness of God everything we do without exception is in pursuit of a goal. We are controlled by what we want to happen in the future, the desires of our heart, whether that be an hour from now or 20 years. The problem is that because we don’t identify what our goals are and write them down they change all the time so we live our life in a squigly line at best and a circle at worst. A second problem with not identifying our goals and writing them down is we tend to pursue goals that others have set for us, and our motivation level is barely strong enough to get ourselves out of bed. If I want to live my life with focused purpose, in a straight line, highly motivatevd then I need to take time and identify what the desires of my heart are that are truly noble, write them down clear, measurable, achievable and a bit beyond where I presently am living. Once I have my goals written down I need to commit to reading them every day. It only takes a few minutes to read my goals every day, but that discipline will increase the probability of accomplishing them a billion times! ( That is not scientific but it is close). The whole goal setting, goal pursuing, goal accomplishing process is really very simple to understand and easy to do, but still most don’t. That is a mystery to me.

Because I teach so much about goals I get a ton of push back from Christians who say things like goals are secular, it is what the world does, goals are fleshly, we are attempting to succeed without God or the power of the Holy Spirit, goals promote pride in our accomplishments, and on the list of reasons go why we shouldn’t do goals. Let me suggest some reasons why being goal focused is very Biblical. First it appears to me from reading the Bible that God is goal oriented. Psalms 33:11 says, “The counsel of the Lord stands forever,
The plans of His heart from generation to generation.” There are many other verses like that, but I am sure we would all agree that God Almighty is not impulsive, or needs to wait to see how things work out before He plans the future. God is all sovereign and amoung other things that means that He is in control of the future. We are created in the image of God and we function best when we function like God at least to the extent that we can. When I write a goal I work hard to decern what God’s will is, so my goal is a “Statement of a commitment to obey God”, and as such would bring His power into my life. “God’s power flows to commitment to obey Him”. As I present my goals to God I say, “Lord, this is what I believe is Your will for my life, but as I pursue it I will be flexible to change it as I would decern Your will”. God gives a bit of His sovereignty to us, and if we prove to be good stewards of that sovereignty, He will give us more. That sovereignty allows us to influence people and to make a difference in the world around us, it is the authority of Christ. The best tool I know of to be a good steward of this “authority” is goal setting.