God has an overriding purpose for your life. Your success in the Christian life will largely depend on your finding out that purpose and labouring to fulfil it. You will need to put that purpose before you and do all that you can to realize it. You will have to set goals for your life that will enable you to be all that Christ saved you for and wants you to be.
While you may still be seeking out that special thing that God has in store for you to do for Him which none but you can do, I suggest that you should begin to work at making goals and accomplishing them. You will then get used to the practical application of the principles set out in this book and then apply them to your over- all life.
We suggest that you prayerfully set goals for yourself for the next twelve months and then labour to accomplish them. You can then set goals for five years, ten years, twenty-five years, fifty years, one hundred years and a life time. Do not be surprised when I write goals for one hundred years. At present, there are at least 30.000 people in the United States of America who are over one hundred years old. Who expects to die tomorrow? Certainly, it is neither you nor me. The sky, not the grave is our hope.
Your goals for twelve months may include the following:
- Goals in the area of knowing God and being like Him
- Goals in receiving revelation
- Goals in the area of other supernatural encounters with God like visions, dreams, encounters with angels, etc.
- Goals in reading the Bible.
- Goals in daily meditation on the Word.
- Goals in memorizing God’s word.
- Goals in obeying Gods word and in sanctification.
- Goals in the development of Christian character.
- Goals in reading Christian literature
- etc
- Goals in the area of serving the Lord
- Goals in ministering to the believers.
- Goals in ministering to the world
- Goals in ministering in
- your Jerusalem (your town)
- your Judea (your nation)
- your Samaria (your continent)
- the uttermost parts of the world (Planet Earth).
- Goals in winning the lost.
- Goals in restoring backsliders.
- Goals in having Christ formed in the saints.
- Goals in the acquisition of Spiritual gifts.
- Goals in the acquisition or development and use of talents.
- Goals in the development of personal ministry.
- etc
- Goals in the realm of finances.
- Goals on how to make money.
- Goals on giving to the Lord and His service.
- Goals in personal financial development, savings, projects, etc.
- Professional goals
- Social goals: Relationship with wife, husband, friends, co-workers, relatives, etc.
- Goals in personal physical appearance; weight, habits, dressing, etc.
There will be goals in all these areas so that when they are accomplished you would have made progress in the direction of being what Christ saved you for and wants you to be.
After you have written the goals, commit them to the Lord and ask Him to help you to realize them. If your goals are what they should be, they will contain elements in which without the supernatural intervention of God, without His blessing, you will fail even though you have put all of yourself into them and done all that you could. Pray about your goals everyday. It might be best to hang your goals where you will see them often in order to pray for them without ceasing. Give a copy of your goals to your best friend so that he can pray for you and you labour to accomplish them, and so that you may not shrink back from some of the items when you feel discouraged.
Work out how you are going to accomplish your goals. Find out how much time, effort, etc you will need to put in. Work out a system of evaluation on a monthly basis. If, for example, you plan to read the Bible through six times in the year, then at the end of each month your evaluation system should check if you have read through half of the Bible. If you have read only 40% then your evaluation should recommend what you should do to catch up.
The monthly evaluations should be summed up after six months to see how things are coming on and to make the necessary adjustments. For example, if the goal in one area has already been 80% accomplished and in another area there is only a 20% accomplishment, then there needs to be redistribution of time so that less is given to the area where there is already 80% accomplishment and more is given where there is only 20% accomplishment.
At the end of the year the total evaluation will be done and should be presented to your friend to whom you gave a copy of the ambitions at the beginning of the year. As you study your performance for one year, you will easily see where your weak- nesses are and labour to get rid of them the following year. You will develop a sense of purpose. You will also develop tenacity and the ability to keep yourself in one direction. Above all, you will satisfy the heart of God and your own heart, and blessed are you.
If you do not know what to do in setting goals and working out how to accomplish them, see someone in the Assembly who will help you. Amen.