Goal Setting The Key to Success
What three goals would you set for your life if you knew that you could achieve them? Would any of them be spiritual in nature? The apostle Paul was one of the most goal-oriented people in the Bible, yet he understood which pursuits were the most important. His chief ambition was to know Christ, His resurrection power, and the fellowship of His suffering (v. 10).
We'd all do well to adopt these goals, but they sound so broad. How do we put them into practice? First, it's important to comprehend that a goal is a purpose or direction toward which we work. This concept is fairly easy to understand when we're talking about specific objectives like going to bed earlier or losing ten pounds, but what steps would you need to take in order to achieve spiritual goals like Paul's?
Success requires choosing steps that are specific, reasonable, and measurable. For example, if you want to know Christ more intimately, you might commit to spending 30 minutes each day praying and reading His Word. After developing your plan and the steps to accomplish it, put your desire into action. If you don't take the necessary steps, it will simply remain a wish. No one develops intimacy with Christ through good intentions; it takes commitment, diligence, and perseverance.
If you feel as if your faith is lacking vitality, it may be that you've become spiritually lazy. No one intends to slip into complacency. But unless you set some specific goals and work to achieve them, you'll drift through life and miss the greatest accomplishment of all--learning to know Christ intimately.
~Dr. Charles F. Stanley~
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God's Pleasure...Your Blessing
In Psalm 35:27 we are told,
Let them shout for joy and be glad, who favor my righteous cause; and let them say continually, "Let the LORD be magnified, Who has pleasure in the prosperity of His servant."
This Psalm says it clearly--God is pleased when you are blessed. The Revised Standard Version translates this verse this way, God delights in the welfare of His servant.
In Luke 12, when talking about God meeting our practical, physical, and material needs, Jesus says, "Do not fear, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom."
You do not need to somehow convince God to meet your needs. In fact, God desires to bless you.
It is like the son who felt his father had not provided for him when his dad passed away. His father left one sibling some property, another one some valuable stock, and all the son got was a box of what looked to him like junk.
One day, because of financial trouble, the son had to move out of his apartment. As he cleaned things out, he found the box of junk he had thrown in the back of a closet. Noticing there were some stamps and trading cards in the box, he decided to see if they were worth anything.
It turned out the trading card collection was filled with rare baseball cards in mint condition. And every one of the stamps was very rare--very valuable. The combined appraisal of the two collections was over $450,000!
His father had provided for him, but the son had lived far below those privileges because he didn't believe his father had blessed him!
Our heavenly Father delights in, He takes pleasure in, the prosperity of His servant. And that means you!
~Bayless Conley~
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1 John 4:8
He that loveth not knoweth not God.
The distinguishing mark of a Christian is his confidence in the love of Christ, and the yielding of his affections to Christ in return. First, faith sets her seal upon the man by enabling the soul to say with the apostle, "Christ loved me and gave Himself for me." Then love gives the countersign, and stamps upon the heart gratitude and love to Jesus in return. "We love Him because He first loved us." In those grand old ages, which are the heroic period of the Christian religion, this double mark was clearly to be seen in all believers in Jesus; they were men who knew the love of Christ, and rested upon it as a man leaneth upon a staff whose trustiness he has tried. The love which they felt towards the Lord was not a quiet emotion which they hid within themselves in the secret chamber of their souls, and which they only spake of in their private assemblies when they met on the first day of the week, and sang hymns in honour of Christ Jesus the crucified, but it was a passion with them of such a vehement and all-consuming energy, that it was visible in all their actions, spoke in their common talk, and looked out of their eyes even in their commonest glances. Love to Jesus was a flame which fed upon the core and heart of their being; and, therefore, from its own force burned its way into the outer man, and shone there. Zeal for the glory of King Jesus was the seal and mark of all genuine Christians. Because of their dependence upon Christ's love they dared much, and because of their love to Christ they did much, and it is the same now. The children of God are ruled in their inmost powers by love-the love of Christ constraineth them; they rejoice that divine love is set upon them, they feel it shed abroad in their hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto them, and then by force of gratitude they love the Saviour with a pure heart, fervently. My reader, do you love Him? Ere you sleep give an honest answer to a weighty question!
~Charles Spurgeon~
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Watch, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh.
Take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares. For as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth. Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man.
The day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape. But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day; we are not of the night, nor of darkness. Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober.
MATT. 25:13. Luke 21:34‑36. I Thes. 5:2‑6.
EVENING
I am the Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect.
Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect. I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
Enoch walked with God and he was not; for God took him.
Grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. -- We all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.
These words spake Jesus, I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil. I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one.
GEN. 17:1. Phi. 3:12‑14. Gen. 5:24. II Pet. 3:18. ‑II Cor. 3:18. John 17:1,15,23
~Samuel Bagster~
