I am starting to write my goals for this next year. I like to have them all done by my birthday on October 27th, and I also want to have them done so I can use them as an illustration for my teaching on goal setting in my leadership class that starts the first week in October. For the last 60 years of my life, I have had one goal for every year old that I am, meaning that I increase the number of goals I have by one each year. Last year, I had 76 goals and should have 77 this year, but I will change that this year. Call it old age, but I could not maintain enthusiasm for that many goals this last year. About halfway through the year, I picked the key goals and reduced my list to 44 goals. I think I will list 40 this year, maybe 45, we will see. The goal-setting discipline I started at age 13 has been the number one key in my life for maintaining faithfulness in my Bible reading and Scripture memory. As I increased the number of goals through High School and College, I began to include my finances, grades, sports, cars, and even my dating and relationships with girls. As I have gotten older, pastoring, being married, raising eight kids, and managing my time have all been added to my goals. It is easy to observe that nothing has been as important in my life as setting and pursuing goals. I have maintained balance with my family, ministry, and hobbies because of planning and goal setting. I am sure that balance has helped me pastor for 50 years without burnout or quitting. I have had regular times of discouragement and weariness over the years,  but managed to get through those times stronger because of the disciplines that I faithfully maintained in pursuit of my goals. One of the key benefits of my goals was the encouragement from others, which I received because I had shared my goals with them. Encouragement from others is critically important to faithfulness in life, and is accepted only by those who know it is essential and seek it. It is hard for me to understand why so few people thoughtfully set and pursue goals for their lives, and why it is so hard to persuade people to do it. This last year, an individual said that goal setting was so natural for me because I am so disciplined. My answer is that goal setting doesn’t come from discipline; discipline comes from goal setting.