"The 7 Secrets to Chasing Your Dream"

That's the title of this short, wise post written by Geoff Talbot.

Goal-Setting, A Christian Approach, Part 5

In this final installment on goal-setting from a Christian perspective, I have a simple bit of advice: Sin boldly.

The words are from Christian reformer, Martin Luther (1483-1546). Luther offered them as advice to those wrestling with decisions.

The advice will make no sense unless one is a follower of Jesus Christ. That's because Luther's not really commending doing things contrary to God's will. Instead, it's tongue-in-cheek counsel to those grateful for the free gift of forgiveness and life that comes to all who believe in Jesus.

Basically, the Christian who "sins boldly" in establishing their goals in life goes through the following steps:

(1) Puts a relationship with Christ first in their life.

(2) Remembers the five basic purposes for all of our lives, as revealed in the Bible and summarized in Rick Warrren's book, The Purpose Driven Life:

• to worship God with our whole lives (this begins with a relationship with Christ)
• to fellowship with other believers in Jesus Christ
• to grow into becoming more like Christ
• to serve others in Christ's Name (at home, at work, at play, in the community, and even in church)
• to pass on the Good News of God's free gifts of forgiveness and eternal life for all with faith in Jesus Christ

(3) Fulfills duties to family members, employers, clients, friends, and neighbors.

(4) Looks for ways to best use talents and abilities to pursue the five purposes.

(5) Becomes familiar with God's Word to better know the mind of the One Who designed us in the first place and Who therefore, knows how our lives can function optimally.

(6) Prays

(7) Seeks the counsel of wise believers who both know God and the person seeking counsel.

(8) Finally, Luther would say, if our intentions are to do God's will and we still aren't sure what the right thing might be, we should do the next thing that seems needing to be done. If our intentions are right, Luther suggests, God is loving and gracious. He will make the most of the decisions and goals we adopt even if, as imperfect people, we might take the wrong step.

The Christian is both the freest person on the planet and the greatest servant. We are called by Jesus to be servants of God and neighbor, as the One we know as God and Savior has served us. [Luke 9:46-48; John 13:12-17] We live in voluntary submission to the purposes of God knowing that He has designed us and has good plans for us. [Jeremiah 29:11] We feel completely free to adopt the lifestyle of loving servants of God and others because we know we belong to God forever.

The thing I notice about Christians--and here I'm talking about the absolutely radically committed Christians--is how free they feel to be utterly idiosyncratic. Their relationship with the God they know through Jesus causes them to be fearless about trying their hands at a million different things.

Business consultant Laurie Beth Jones, in her book, Jesus, Life Coach, writes:

I don't know how anyone attempting to follow Jesus could ever be bored. As author Annie Dillard says, if we truly knew who we were worshiping, we'd all be wearing hard hats in church.

Jesus came not to reinforce your comfort zone, but to set your old small-minded ways on fire.

No grouping of people I know of feels as much personal security about being themselves as Christians on fire for Christ:

• Desmond Tutu has fearlessly spoken out for human rights in a clerical collar while dancing the traditional dances of his black African people.
• Jimmy Carter witnesses for Christ at a summit meeting with Leonid Brezhnev and after losing his re-election bid, becomes the most unique ex-President in US history.
• The members of MXPX and POD festoon their bodies with tattoos, play thrashing music that makes its way onto mainstream music charts, and still maintain their Christian integrity, even when featured on MTV.
• Bono may be an "unchurched Christian," but he is in closer community with people from around the world, including the destitute poor and innocent victims of AIDS of Africa, acting as their advocates even in the counsel of prime ministers and presidents.
• The late Mother Teresa and the millions she's inspired feel free to not worry about where their next pennies may come from and have simply taken care of the dying others pass by.

I have witnessed this fearless weirdness not just in the famous, but in the everyday people who populate my world. They are unabashed about carrying their faith, witness for Christ, and Christian sensibilities into their daily lives, having decided to end the bifurcation of their lives between "sacred" and "secular." (For a great discussion of integrating Christian faith into daily living, read D. Michael Bennethum's little book, Listen! God is Calling!: Luther Speaks of Vocation, Faith, and Work.)

Christians feel free to sin boldly and risk getting it wrong because they believe--I believe--the words of the New Testament, where it says:

We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to His purpose. [Romans 8:28]

God wants you to have a fantastic life of significance and meaning. In order to enjoy that life, I invite you to:

Turn from sin and ask God for forgiveness. Sin is the thing that prevents us from enjoying life as God meant for us to live it. Sin is the condition of heart, mind, and will that rebels against God, the One Who designed us in the first place. (Mark 1:15)

Trust (or believe) in Jesus, God the Son, Who took our punishment for sin on a cross and rose again in order to open up eternity with God to us. (John 3:16; Romans 6:23)

Ask God to guide you through your life, including being part of a faith community where you'll be supported, encouraged, and challenged in living faithfully and authentically. (Luke 11:9-10; Romans 12:12-26)

Sin boldly, knowing that God will make the most of your best efforts to live life His way! [Romans 8:28]

Goal-Setting, A Christian Approach, Part 4

Joseph Sittler was a great theologian, celebrated around the world. But he never lost his simple faith or his simple touch.

He was one of first twentieth-century Christian thinkers to write about the relationship between faith and concern for the environment. But in a 1975 interview, a portion of which appears in a collection of Sittler’s thoughts and writings, Grace Notes and Other Fragments, he said that this hadn’t come about through deliberate forethought on his part. What he said in explaining this is worth quoting here in its entirety:

I have never found it possible to lay down a program regarding the apparitions of the providence of God. I look at my own life and I cannot be absolutely sure that the things that have happened to me, that seemed to be positive and useful, had a direct line to God’s providence. Some of these seemed to have been accidental. I was in the right place at the right time, and I happened to have been studying a subject just when somebody wanted something said about it. Maybe that’s the way the providence of God works, but I have no mathematics of providence. I feel that I have been providentially led, in that I had motivations I cannot fully understand.

For reasons that have nothing to do with Christian commitment, I have always been interested in nature and I just kept acting on that interest, not out of a service to God but because I enjoyed it. Then I found that what I did for enjoyment served well to help me relate theology to the environmental problem. That may be the way God gets his providential things done; and I hope it is. But I don’t want to stick him with it. You know, people often tell me, “Now I will make this decision, I will pray about it.” I must say (not with pride, because it’s nothing to be proud of) that I don’t pray about such things. When I was called to the University of Chicago, what I did was come down here for one brief quarter and try it out before making my answer to the invitation. Then I woke up one day to discover that inwardly I had already accepted the invitation. There was a thing to be done here; I felt competent to do it; it needed doing; it was worth doing.

Here is the testimony of one faithful follower of Jesus Christ whose notions about how to make decisions and set goals probably would strike some as being less than Christian. These folks believe, not without some warrant, that you first begin with an overall vision of your mission in life, then with dogged determination you pursue that vision through all your goals and decisions. They believe that one must wrest God's will for them out of God's reluctant hands.

I must confess that I have grown wary of such notions. Writer and blogger Rob Asghar agrees and mentioned a discovery he made after recently reading the autobiography of college basketball coach, John Wooden:

...Wooden didn't become the greatest college basketball coach in history by having a vision about being the best college basketball coach in history; he didn't win 10 titles by envisioning 10 titles; he didn't "focus" or "unleash" all his and others' energies on a specific goal.

John Wooden, the Wizard of Westwood, simply set out to build his team and program so that each time his players stepped onto the court, they could win. He took on his job in daily increments and put one foot in front of the other.

Life is composed of a succession of small moments, each one adding up to a lifetime. The goals embraced by some whose achievements are noteworthy or exemplary have been no more cosmic than to put their hands to the next worthy thing needing to be done. That’s what Sittler did. It’s what John Wooden did. The results in both cases were stunning.

This was the same approach to goal-setting taken by God-in-the-flesh, Jesus. Jesus knew full well what His overarching mission in life was. He was to go to Jerusalem where, as the perfect sacrifice for sin, He would die on a cross. The Gospel of Luke says that Jesus was so intent on that mission that “He set His face to go to Jerusalem.” [Luke 9:51]

While Jesus came to save the whole world from its sin [John 3:16], He practiced what I call the principle of the ripple. Jesus worked to have an impact on His own people, the Jews, never deliberately seeking out contact with non-Jews. (These are people described in our English translations of the Bible as gentiles, a word that translates the Greek term, ethnon, literally, the ethnics.) “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” Jesus once explained. [Matthew 15:24] Under this principle of the ripple, Jesus, Who had come for the whole world, seemed intent on first creating an impact through His life, death, and resurrection among the Jews, thereby unleashing the message of forgiveness and new life for all with faith in Him on the whole world. [Acts 1:8]

But Jesus also practiced what has been called a theology of interruptions. When a Roman soldier came with a request for the healing of his servant, Jesus paid heed [Matthew 8]. When a Samaritan woman of low repute asked Jesus for “living water,” He let her in on how she could have a new life [John 4].

When asked to depart from His normal modus operandi, Jesus laid aside His immediate agenda, to pursue His deeper goals. Jesus went to work on the next worthy thing at hand and clearly believed  that no matter whether it was part of His plan for the day, it was always the right time to do God’s will, loving God and loving neighbor. [Matthew 22:34-40] He even took this attitude when confronting arrest and execution. In the garden of Gethsemane, He prayed to God the Father, "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup [His suffering and death] pass from Me; yet not what I want but what You want." [26:39]

In fact, Jesus told a celebrated story commending His theology of interruptions:

Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. ‘Teacher,’ he said, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ He said to him, ‘What is written in the law? What do you read there?’ He answered, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.’ And he said to him, ‘You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.’

But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbour?’ Jesus replied, ‘A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while travelling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, “Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.” Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?’ He said, ‘The one who showed him mercy.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Go and do likewise.’ [Luke 10:25-37]

You can't love others if you're not interruptible and you can't fulfill God's plan for your life if you don't love others.

A friend of mine once told me about a pastor who had gotten himself into so much trouble with his congregation that he felt compelled to resign his position.

“What was the problem?” I asked.

“He was a kook about efficiency,” my friend explained. “He made these pronouncements about his vision for the congregation and about his mission as the pastor. Then he’d spout things like, ‘Plan the work; work the plan.’ “

“So far,” I told my friend, “ with the exception of his being an annoying aper of cliches, he sounds like a good leader.”

“You’re right,” he said, “The problem was that he was so intent on his plan that he forgot about God’s plan. He ignored the needs of people that He could have helped, ignored things that in the long run, would have advanced his mission and vision. He was so focused on the minutiae of his plan that he forgot about the bigger plan of which he was a part.”

I wonder how many of us do that.

How many parents become so consumed with making the money they think is needed to give their children good lives that they become inaccessible and unknown to the kids?

How many managers become so involved in implementing a program they believe will make their company better that they forget to do the basics of leading people and maintaining good relations with their customers?

A good theology of interruption, with its openness to loving God and loving neighbor, even when it’s inconvenient and it’s not on that day’s to do list, serves God, our neighbors, our families, and all of us well.

Sometimes the shortest way to achieving our goals in life is to take a detour from them and put our hand to the next thing life throws our ways.

[Read the first three installments of this series:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3]

[Note: An article on the 'theology of interruptions' appeared in a 1982 edition of the now-defunct, Lutheran Standard magazine. I can't find my copy. I'm sorry that I'm unable to give proper attribution at this time.]

Goal-Setting, A Christian Approach, Part 2

Yesterday, I noted successful people driven by the self-aggrandizing notions that inform the average self-help book or seminar, are unhappy, unfulfilled people. They’re typified by the extremely wealthy man who’d captured every dream he’d ever had who I overheard at a recent political fund-raiser. “How are you doing?” he was asked. “Oh, alright,” he said, “But really, nothing really changes in life. It’s just the same old boring stuff all the time.”

Here was a man who had achieved his goals in life. But because all his pursuits had been propelled by the desire to please self, he was supremely unhappy.

At the conclusion of yesterday’s installment, I wrote:

...the first thing we need to get straight when it comes to establishing goals for ourselves is what our ultimate desires are to be and from what sources we ultimately are going to derive meaning, purpose, and fulfillment.

Let me introduce you to someone who may or may not be a “success” by the world’s usual measurements, but who epitomizes success from a different perspective.

When I was a young guy in my twenties, I came to know a man named Charlie. Charlie was in his seventies back then, a semi-retired housepainter who for a time, still occasionally took on a job here and there.

Charlie’s wife suffered from a disease that ultimately rendered her bed-ridden, utterly dependent on Charlie and the family and friends he recruited to help him for a few sparse hours each week. Until his wife was very ill, Charlie was always in Sunday worship. It was one of the few times in any given week that he left his wife alone.

I saw Charlie sad at times. There was no denying the pain he underwent watching the love of his life suffer and die. Nor did he deny his grief when she died. But I never heard him complain of his lot in life, never heard him rue the hours spent caring for her.

In fact, if there is one word I would use to describe Charlie, it would be grateful. He seemed filled with a constant gratitude.

This impression was only strengthened by something he told me and another twenty-something guy from our church on the day of his wife’s funeral. The service had taken place, as had the committal and the luncheon in the church’s basement fellowship hall. Charlie was up in the sanctuary, making decisions about what to do with the flowers that had been sent in honor of his wife and we had gone to check on him.

Charlie seemed to sense that this was a teachable moment for two young bucks, each of us then married just a few short years.

“Whitey and Mark,” he said, “I’m so thankful to God today. God has always been good to me. He gave me a wonderful wife to share my life with all these years. And of course, because of Jesus, He’s given me the hope that I’ll see her again some day. Only when I do, she’ll be healthy again. I am very blessed!”

But what about all the “lost” years when he could have been doing something else?

If either of us had asked Charlie that question, he would have looked at us as though we were deranged...and for good reason.

Charlie was someone who had his priorities straight. Jesus says that the highest pursuits any of us have in this life are to love God and to love our neighbor, including the neighbors who live under our roofs. Everything else must take second place to that. [Matthew 22:34-40] Charlie believed that was true.

He obviously felt that it was important for all of us to love sacrificially, not to earn spiritual merit badges and not out of grim obligation, but because, through Jesus, Who died on a cross for us, we have been loved sacrificially by God. Sacrificial love is our sensible, appropriate, and difficult response to the God Who has loved us sacrificially, the God Who assures us that even if we lose our earthly lives in the giving of love, we still will have eternity with Him.

The New Testament book of Romans says:

“...while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly [that’s all of us who live with unforgiven sin]. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person...But God proves His love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us...” [Romans 5:6-8]

And a man named John, often called the apostle of love, puts it succinctly:

“In this is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another...” [First John 4:10-11]

The self-help books tell us to dig into ourselves, get a fix on our gifts and passions, and to adopt a life plan and subordinate goals based on that internal inventory.

The Bible commends a different way of going about our living, the way that Charlie adopted. It begins with gratitude for the love God has given to us through Christ and it makes the pursuit of God and His righteousness our number one priority. In setting our goals, we would do well to remember Jesus’ words:

‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?” For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

‘So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today. ' [Matthew 6:25-34]

[Next installment: God and your future]

Goal-Setting, A Christian Approach, Part 1

Yesterday morning, after I’d spent some time praying and reading Scripture, I pulled out my day planner and jotted down the things I wanted to get done.

During the day, I made satisfying checkmarks next to each completed task. I say "satisfying" because each fulfilled goal brought a sense of accomplishment.

I guess that other people feel the same way. I’ve read that achieving goals, even small ones like the items on my daily to-do list, can infuse our physiological systems with a supply of endorphins, those little "feel good" chemicals our bodies crave.

Whether that’s true or not, I like attaining goals. If the racks of self-help books found in the average book store are any indication, you probably feel the same way.

And if those same books tell us anything, it’s that most of us who adopt goals do so because we want to achieve something called success. They advise that our daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly goals ought to have something to do with an overall game plan, a scheme or vision, for what successful life for us is to be about. Otherwise, they argue, we’re a bit like the hungry person pushing a shopping cart through a Super WalMart. We may add a lot to our carts, but not get what we need to be our best selves.

Before you tune me out on the suspicion that I’m about to rail against success as an unworthy desire, put your mind at ease. I can’t imagine that any of us, no matter what our religious background, would say that achieving success is a bad thing. What parent, for example, would ever tell their child, "Make failure your aim"?

But I do think there is a huge problem with the notions of what constitutes a successful life that fill so many self-help books and on which, truth be told, we often build our goals.

In his important book, The Purpose Driven Life, Rick Warren writes:

Self-help books, even Christian ones, usually offer the same predictable steps
to finding your life’s purpose: Consider your dreams. Clarify your values. Set
some goals. Figure out what you are good at. Aim high. Go for it! Be
disciplined. Believe you can achieve your goals. Involve others. Never give
up.

If you’ve ever read a self-help book, you know that drill. Maybe like me, you’ve also known people who followed that drill and rode it all the way to the success of their dreams: self-aggrandizing, self-glorifying success. In these folks, I’ve usually observed a few characteristics:

First: They’re not happy or fulfilled. A friend of mine once served as the accountant for a successful entrepreneur. My friend and he spent hours strategizing ways to shelter the man’s fortune from taxation. One day, in the middle of one of these sessions, this wealthy guy told my friend, "Back when I had nothing, I used to think that if I had just a fraction of the money I have now, I’d have no worries. But I worry more now about keeping it than I ever did about getting it."

Second: Because success hasn’t proved fulfilling, they often start searching for other pots of gold at the ends of other rainbows. Their lives become futile searches for things that will confirm that they’ve arrived. Their pots of gold don’t have to be money or possessions. They can be experiences, sexual conquests, sports trophies, prestige, recognition, power, winning an argument, or a zillion other rewards we may use to salve our egos and assure ourselves of our value as human beings. "How much money does a person need to live?" a wealthy man was once asked. "Just a little more," he replied. We apply this same approach to many of the things we use to define successful living.

There’s nothing wrong with having desires or goals. Human beings appear to be unique among the species in our ability to contemplate and anticipate a future, to form desires for the days and years ahead. This, I believe is part of what the Old Testament book of Genesis means when it says that we were created in the "image of God." (Genesis 1:26) God has created eternal appetites in us.

But, like the rest of our nature, our appetites and desires have become marred, distorted, by that state of alienation from God, from others, and from our true selves that the Bible calls sin. Rather than setting our desires, hopes, and ambitions on eternal things--things that don’t wear out, give out, or die--we make dead and dying stuff like money, possessions, experiences, sexual conquests, trophies, prestige, recognition, and power are ultimate aims. This is like filling the belly of a crying baby with junk food. It may be momentarily filling, but it won’t be very good for them.

The New Testament portion of the Bible says of us:

Claiming to be wise, they became fools...they exchanged the glory of the
immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed
animals or reptiles...they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped
and served the creature rather than the Creator...[Romans 1:22-25]

Warren, I think, correctly identifies the biggest problem with our self-driven notions of success and goal-setting, when he writes of the self-help books’ advice:

Of course, [their] recommendations often lead to great success. You can usually
succeed in reaching a goal if you put your mind to it. But being successful and
fulfilling your life’s purposes are not at all the same issue! You could reach
all your personal goals, becoming a raving success by the world’s standards, and
still miss the purposes for which God created you.

Jesus once told the story of a man who achieved his self-defined goals and purposes in life:

"The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, ‘What
should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he said, ‘I will do
this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store
all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods
laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You
fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you
have prepared, whose will they be?’ So it is with those who store up treasures
for themselves but are not rich towards God." [Luke 12:16-21]

So, is Jesus saying that we shouldn’t have goals in life? That we shouldn’t work hard or earn money?

Not at all. But I do think that the first thing we need to get straight when it comes to establishing goals for ourselves is what our ultimate desires are to be and from what sources we ultimately are going to derive meaning, purpose, and fulfillment. More on this subject in the next installment of this series.