EP 40: The Art of Setting Worthwhile Goals

Goals are important because they provide a sense of purpose and direction. Proverbs 16:9 assures us “A man’s heart plans his way, But the LORD directs his steps.”

So even when you aren’t 100% sure what the LORD would have you do with your time, I recommend prayerfully setting a worthwhile goal and working toward it. As long as you hold your plans lightly, you can trust God to redirect you if that is what needs to happen.

How to Set Worthwhile Goals

We should begin by defining what we mean by GOAL. The dictionary definition reads like this:

1. (in football, soccer, rugby, hockey, and some other games) a pair of posts linked by a crossbar, often with a net attached behind it, forming a space into or over which the ball has to be sent in order to score.
2. the object of a person’s ambition or effort; an aim or desired result

For the purposes of today’s podcast, I’d like you to picture your goal as:

• A target
• Something you’re shooting for or
• A vision of what you hope to accomplish.

In 1 Corinthians 9:24-27, Paul writes,

“Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win. Everyone who competes in the games exercises self-control in all things. They do so to obtain a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. Therefore I run in such a way as not to run aimlessly; I box in such a way, as to avoid hitting air; but I strictly discipline my body and make it my slave, so that, after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified.”

Goals are important because they give us purpose and direction.

Making Plans

We’ve graduated ten of our twelve children so far, and I’ve always found it interesting to hear the young students in their graduating classes talk about their plans for the future.

Some of them don’t seem to have a clue as to what they’ll do after graduation. If you ask them, some might shrug or say they’re just waiting for the Lord to show them what to do next. Others have their entire lives mapped out in their minds.

Like Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life, they’re “shakin’ the dust of this crummy little town off [their feet and they’re] gonna see the world. Italy, Greece, the Parthenon, the Colosseum. Then, [they may] come back here to go to college and see what they know. And then [they’re] gonna build things: airfields… skyscrapers a hundred stories high… bridges a mile long…”

You know the line.

Either way, James 4:13-15 provides some good counsel:

“Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”     

Even if you aren’t 100% sure what God would have you do with your life, I recommend setting a reasonable goal and working toward it.

As long as you hold your plans lightly, you can trust Him to redirect you if that is what needs to happen.

Proverbs 16:9 assures us…

 “A man’s heart plans his way, But the LORD directs his steps.”

And Psalms 37:23-24 states,

“The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD: and he delighteth in his way. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the LORD upholdeth him with his hand.”

Target Practice

Last January, my youngest daughter and I attended a mother-daughter retreat with several girls from our homeschool co-op and their moms, and we were able to do a little target practice during our free time while we were at the retreat center. 

We practiced shooting rifles as well as bows and arrows. I was not very adept at either sport, but my daughter did pretty well – especially at archery.

So when we’re talking about taking aim at our goals, I want you to picture an archer with a quiver full of arrows slung across his back as he grips a compound bow.

There’s no way that archer is ever going to hit his target if he never fits an arrow to his string, is there?

He may talk the talk: “You just hide and watch. Someday, I’m going to hit it big.”

But that won’t become a reality unless he actually shoots.

As Proverbs 14:23 points out,

“In all labor there is profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty.”

Or as Zig Ziglar observed, “If you aim at nothing, you’ll hit it every time.”

So our archer needs to take an arrow out of his quiver and fit it to his string. That’s the first step.

But that action alone is not enough, is it? Because if he stands with his back to the target when he lets that arrow fly, he’s going to miss his mark for sure.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who take THIS approach to meeting their goals. Their actions they take don’t line up with their stated goals at all.

Take for instance all the pre-med students you’ll find in just about any freshman class. Some of these students are serious. They study hard, make the grades, do great.

But others aren’t willing to put in the necessary work to make it happen. They party and skip class and miss assignments and fail their tests. And there isn’t a med school in the country that will take them seriously if they maintain those bad habits throughout their college years.

If I tell you I want to lose weight, but every time you see me, I’m gorging on chocolate. You know that I’m not really committed to my stated goal of shedding unwanted pounds…my REAL priority is satisfying a sweet tooth

Same goes for my husband, only he won’t be eating chocolate…he’ll be eating sour patch kids.

Align Actions with Goals

So, how can we make our actions line up with our stated goals?

•  Focus on the goal
• Don’t get distracted
• Write it down
• Pray about it

This is exactly what our archer needs to do if ever he is going to hit the target: Turn around and face it, focus on it undistractedly, and pray that God will help him shoot straight.

Proverbs 29:18 tells us,

“Where there is no vision, the people perish.”

Get a CLEAR Vision

Which is why you should ask God to give you a CLEAR vision of what He wants you to accomplish…

C = Concrete

Your vision needs to be CONCRETE. Don’t waste time with goals that are vague or ambiguous. Make sure your goals are well-defined and specific.

That’s what I mean by CONCRETE: Clearly defined and unambiguous.

L = Logical

Next, our goals should be LOGICAL.

• They should be in line with our long term vision – Winning first place in a hot dog eating contest is a concrete goal, but if my larger objective is to be a trim, healthy mama, then scarfing down 50 frankfurters in a single sitting makes is not going to help my fitness goals.
• They should make sense (at least to you) – Logical also means it should make sense – at least to you. I remember seeing a movie in which one character only worked out one side of his body. Everyone else thought that was crazy, but he wanted to see how much bigger his muscles would get if he lifted weights…. so that strategy made perfect sense to him. Similarly, when my husband and I were newlywed, the idea of forgoing all forms of birth control didn’t make sense to a lot of people, including both sets of our parents and lots other very vocal friends and family members – but that’s okay. We don’t expect everybody to share our goal. But shunning birth control made perfect sense to us because we were determined to trust God with our fertility just like we trust Him with our salvation and our health and our finances. And leaving our family planning up to God seemed like a logically consistent thing for us to do.
• They should be large enough to be a challenge – Your goals should definitely stretch you.
• They should be small enough to be attainable – Which is why we try to break bigger goals into bite-sized pieces. One way to break big goals into little ones is to make them time-oriented rather than task oriented. You may not have a huge block of time to devote to completing a difficult task like writing a book or cleaning out the garage or teaching your child college algebra all at once, but you can set aside small amounts of time and work toward that end by spending 15 minutes a day emptying a box stored in your garage or half an hour developing your book idea or twenty minutes doing multiplication drills and covering a math lesson with your grade schooler.

Isaiah 28:10 talks about adding “precept upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, there a little….” That’s because slow, steady incremental steps add up to significant progress over time.

My grandfather always said, “Watch your nickels and dimes, and the dollars will take care of themselves.”

The same is true of time: “Watch your hours and days, and the years will take care of themselves.”

Or, as another wise person observed, “By the inch, life’s a cinch. By the yard, life is hard.”

Elmore John Leonard, Jr. was an American novelist and screenwriter. His earliest novels, published in the 1950s, were Westerns, but Leonard went on to specialize in crime fiction and suspense thrillers. A reporter once asked him, “How do you write such interesting books?”

And I love his response: “I just leave out all the boring stuff.”

That’s a great principle for time management, as well. How do you accomplish so much in a day? You just cut out all the time wasters.

E = Ethical

Of course, our goals should also be ethical. It does us no good if we set concrete, logical goals that are illegal or immoral.

Instead, we should think BIG by making sure our goals are beneficial to others, intrinsically good, and glorifying to God.

Beneficial to Others – Stop and consider how our goals and actions might benefit the people around us:

Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility consider one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. - Philippians 2:3-4

Intrinsically Good – James 4:17 speaks to the fact we should devote ourselves to doing good:

"Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin." - James 4:17

Glorifying to God. – And 1 Corinthians 10:31 makes it clear that glorifying God should also take priority:

"Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God." - 1 Corinthians 10:31

A = Active

We should also make a point to set active goals.

• Active v. Passive – “I will do such and such…” v. “I’ll stop doing thus and so…”

From a practical standpoint, it’s easier to replace a bad habit with a good habit than to just stop doing the bad thing.

Charles Duhigg provided all sorts of scientific data backing up that fact in his groundbreaking book The Power of Habit (which I highly recommend reading and will link in today’s show notes)

But we must also contrast

• Action v. Intention – Don’t just think about doing something, actually do it.

I think it was Henry Ford who said, “You can’t build a reputation on what you’re going to do.” At some point, you’ve got to stop planning and get to work.

General George Patton once observed, “A good plan executed today is better than a perfect plan executed at some indefinite point in the future.”

Better is a good plan in action than a perfect plan on paper.

We’re getting ready to take a big family road trip – and a lot of planning has gone into getting ready for it. But if all I did was daydream about where I wanted to go, that trip would never come to fruition.

So, instead, we saved up the money. My husband requested the time off from work. I mapped out a route that will take us where we want to go. I made reservations for all our stops along the way. My husband will service the van while I pack the bags, then – when the time comes — we’ll load everyone into the car and be on our way.

R = Rewarding

And my last tip for goal planning is to pick a goal that is rewarding.

By rewarding, I don’t necessarily mean you’ll gain recognition or appreciation. There may not be any accolades involved.

And you may not even particularly enjoy the process – which is certainly true of the half marathon I completed in February and the full marathon my husband and I ran 20+ years ago.  I’ve never experienced a runner’s high and don’t particularly enjoy plodding along for hours on end. But I do enjoy the benefits of increased energy and lowered heart rate and improved health that accompanied my training.

But beyond the warm fuzzies or blue ribbons your efforts may or may not garner you, the goals you set should give you a sense of purpose and perspective and satisfaction over working toward a goal that is bigger than yourself.

And we also need to recognize that many if not most of those kinds of goals aren’t necessarily accomplished on our first try. Some may literally take a lifetime, and we will need an extra measure of endurance to keep at them without giving up or becoming discouraged.

Picture that archer we were talking about at the beginning. He’s finally facing in the right direction. His attention is fully focused on the goal. He fits the arrow to his string and sends it sailing through the air, only to fall short of his mark.

What will his response be then? What would yours be? Will you throw up your hands in disgust and quit in frustration? Will you cry,“This is useless” – forget the whole thing….  pack your bags and go home?

That’s how lots of people react to failure…. But you’ll never reach your goal if that’s your response.

Take a page out of Thomas Edison’s book, instead. Did you know he tested thousands of designs without success while trying to create a lightbulb? Yet his response was this: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

Don’t you admire his grit?

He also said, “Many of life’s failures are people who didn’t realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”

And another of his quotes I love is this: “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”

We’d all love to be instantaneously successful. But that rarely happens. Most people who appear to be overnight successes have actually been plodding away at their goals for years before catching a big break.

And that’s the kind of tenacity I want to show, as well.

As Galatians 6:9 entreats us,

“Let us not grow weary in doing good, for in due season we shall reap, if we don’t lose heart.”

Joshua 1:9 is another good one: “

"Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.”

You may have heard it said that success is its own reward. And that’s undoubtedly true.

But doing the right thing for the right reason and making slow, steady progress is a reward in itself, even if you never completely achieve the goal you were aiming for. Each time you shoot and hit the mark, then step forward to retrieve your arrow, you’re just that much closer to the target and that much more likely to hit it on your next try.

But even if we never get the bulls eye we were hoping for, we are better off for having tried. There is honor in the effort. Hebrews chapter 11 is filled with such stories. Sometimes called the hall of faith, it recounts the lives of countless saints who came before us – men and women of faith who did not live to see the earthly fulfilment of what they’d hoped for, “since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.”

So prayerfully set goals but hold them with an open hand. Make a plan and stick with it as long as the LORD allows. Invest your time wisely. Make sure the things you’re doing daily are carrying you in the direction you want to go.

Take into consideration the needs of those around you. Don’t get discouraged when you face setbacks or don’t progress as quickly as you’d hoped. Just keep on praying. Keep on working. Keep on trusting. And leave the results to God.