Goals are as unique as we are and goal setting in life and business has always been touted as a means to ensure you can successfully achieve more for your life and family. They should reflect our unique personality and passions. There are plenty of experts who can sell you the dream of successful goal setting, but as Christians, how do we ensure the goals we set are faith based and in accordance with God’s plan for us?
We have developed these steps to goal setting specifically to embrace both proven traditional and spiritual methods that we hope can guide you as you plan for this new year.
- Start with Prayer
Prayer is the best way to stimulate the process of goal setting. Take some time away from the hustle of daily life and spend quality time in prayer with God. Reflect on how your goals start with God or why God would want you to achieve this goal. Pray about your goals asking God to be the catalyst to you reaching your goals. Also, ask for help to see which goals are not in alignment for what He wants for you.
If you set goals in the context of prayer, there is a much higher likelihood that your goals will glorify God, and if they don’t glorify God, then they aren’t worth setting in the first place.
- Clarify Your Intentions
If your goals are set to only serve yourself, then spiritually, it would be better for you if you failed to meet them. You should therefore consider your intentions behind your goals. Take a long, honest look in the mirror and make sure you’re going after your goals for the right reasons.
Proverbs 16:3, “Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and he will establish your plans.”
- Be Specific and Make a Record of Your Goals
If a goal isn’t measurable, you have no way of knowing whether you have achieved it. Starting to run isn’t a goal unless you set a timeframe or distance that you want to achieve. Similarly, setting unrealistic timeframes on goals simply makes them unachievable. Running a marathon in three months is possible, but very daunting to a beginner! Break down larger goals into smaller chunks and set mini targets along the way. And remember, it’s OK to make revisions.
Make sure you record your goals by writing them down or recording them in some way to be able to see how far you have come. The act of verbalization is an act of faith. At some point in the process of goal setting, you need to muster the courage to verbalize it. It is after all, a God idea as well!
Habakkuk 2:2-3, And the LORD answered me: “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it. For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end—it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay.”
- Include Others
Although you are the one setting the goals, and it makes sense to have some individual goals, nothing cements a relationship like a shared goal. Goals are relational glue. And God set the standard with the Great Commission outlined in Mathew 28:16-20. If you want to grow closer to God, go after the God-sized goal He set nearly two thousand years ago. Taking other family members along too, only increases the intensity.
Family goals encourage you to grow closer together whilst celebrating the individual needs and passions of the different individuals. To use another analogy, reading a book of the Bible every week is an achievable family goal. Applying the learnings from it will be different for you, your wife, sons and daughters and other family members as they go about their own lives. Celebrating those learnings together will both further develop your relationship with them and enrich your family spiritual relationship with God.
- Celebrate Along the Way
When you accomplish a goal, celebrate it. When God answers a prayer, have a party! Celebrate with the same intensity with which you pray. Enjoy an Ebenezer moment. Remember Samuel; When the Philistines neared Israel, a “great thunder” scared and shook up the Philistines (1 Samuel 7:10). This state of dismay allowed Israel to prevail. Samuel memorialized the victory and set a stone between Mizpeh and Shen. 1 Samuel 7:12 tells us he “named it Ebenezer, saying, ‘Thus far the Lord has helped us.’”
Find a unique way to celebrate achieving a goal and commemorate it. Imagine what your garden would look like in 20 years if you placed an Ebenezer stone every time a prayer was answered.
- Dream Big and Think Long
Your life goal list will include goals that are big and small. It will include goals that are short-term and long-term. But it is imperative that you include at least one GIGANTIC goal. A great big GOD sized goal that potentially can qualify you as crazy. Here’s why: big goals turn us into big people. You may not have the slightest idea how you can achieve your goal, but without it, you won’t see any of the signposts towards achieving it. Our God can move mountains!
If we want to dream big, we need to think long. Big dreams often translate into long goals, some can even take a lifetime to achieve. But it is never too late to start.
Article written by S. Sumner. PKNZ contributor.
