What is your GOAL(s) in life?

I don't know about you, but I tend to easily become a very busy and active person going nowhere. The first time I ever saw a cartoon about humans resembling a hamster on his wheel - going full speed to nowhere - I didn't know whether to laugh and cry because that is so often my life. I know that's true for many of you with whom I speak at well. Busy, tired, and not sure where you're headed.

With a few years of experience and lots of anguish over wanting to be well focused in my life, I have learned a little secret that I try to apply at least daily in my life. The secret is to take a minute regularly to remember my goals and envision myself moving toward them - then getting off my back side and moving toward those goals.

Jesus was enormously busy, popular, challenged, overworked and had a couple of huge groups of detractors that wanted to put an end to him. One of those detractors asked Jesus, "Teacher, what is the greatest of the commandments?" Jesus replied, "Love the Lord you God with all of your heart and with all of your soul and with all of your mind. That is the first and greatest of the commandments. Another is like it, Love your neighbor as yourself. Upon these two hang all the Law and the Prophets."

Jesus essentially answered for us the great question, "WHAT IS YOUR GOAL IN LIFE?" - It is nothing less to love God, Self and Others fully. That will look different for all of us. For some, our love is expressed through teaching and verbal skills, some of us through the work of our hands, others through business skills. But, the bottom line is LOVING GOD fully and then allowing the love we experience from God to flow in us for our benefit and through us to the benefit of the world.

Loving God fully with our whole person is a lifetime endeavor. We grow bit by bit. But, growth optimally takes place when a) we know what we are aiming at and b) we practice living toward our goals daily. For me this is stopping to pray and worship. For me this is asking daily, what does it mean to love my wife and kids as we all get a little older? What does it mean to be a pastor in Greenwood? What is my best avenue for loving others?

For all of us, our series this year on "Following Jesus" will bring us to a point of wrestling and again and again with these core, goal-in-life issues and I both fear and savor the time we will spend together. I fear how little I know and how much I have yet to learn. I savor the idea that we are all going to walk more closely with Christ and see amazing things happen in and around our lives in the coming year.

posted by Steve-Dave @ 2:39 PM