I Love Birthdays

Today is my wife’s birthday.  She is 30ish and is just as gorgeous and wonderful today as she was the day I first saw her and thought; “That is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in my life.”

We have an annual tradition that I implemented for her 20th birthday and it’s called “Shawna Day.”

On or around her birthday, depending on what day of the week it falls, the entire day is all about her.  We do only the things she likes to do, we go only to the places she wants to go, and we only eat the kinds of food she likes to eat.

Needless to say, she looks forward to it every single year.  And so do I.

The truth is that I LOVE birthdays.  I have heard it said by many that they don’t see why a birthday is all that important since they didn’t do anything to “deserve” the celebration.  They were born, that’s it, and they had nothing to do with that.  I think that is exactly the reason why birthdays should be celebrated.

We live in a culture that is absolutely obsessed with accomplishment.

• Championships in sports
• Academic honors and graduation
• Titles and awards on the job
• Good grades
• Artistic awards
• A glowing resume
• A long list of achieved goals

Birthdays require nothing of the person being celebrated.  We are celebrating the fact that they are alive.  We are celebrating the fact that God was pleased to create them and to bless our lives with their presence.  They don’t have to do anything at all, they are being celebrated because of the gift that is their existence.

It’s a celebration of unconditional love.  It is an exuberant expression of thanks to the One who made us.  That is a beautiful thing, a God-honoring, God-glorifying thing, and it should be made much of.

So today is “Shawna Day,” and I can’t wait to get started.

Top 5 Reasons Why I Don’t Do Concerts

I am really late to the party on this, but I have recently discovered the awsomeness that is the Avett Brothers.  On advice from friends, I picked up one of their albums and instantly loved what I was hearing.  I am now a fan and have already purchased three more of their albums and have been listening to them for two weeks straight.

The Avett Brothers are coming to my fair city in January and my friends are telling me that now that I am a fan, we all need to get tickets and go to the show.  And my response to this is…no thanks.  I do love their music, but I don’t go to concerts.  Here’s why…

1.  Money

Live concerts cost WAAAAY too much money, and I don’t just mean the price of the tickets.  Not only am I paying $35 minimum for a seat that is so far in the nose bleeds I can barely see the stage, I am also paying for parking, gas to and from the venue, dinner out, etc.  You add all that up and I have spent well over $100!  Do you have any idea how many albums I can buy for that same $100?  I don’t either, but a bunch I would imagine.

2.  Crowds

It has been my experience in the past that crowds at concerts are typically made up of hard core fans, most of whom leave their brains at home when they come to the show. (I don’t include my friends in this group.)  Have you ever seen footage of people at concerts who stand down by the stage screaming their lungs out, crying, and holding up their hands in the hopes that one of the band members will favor them by touching it?  Ridiculous.  Not my scene.  Not at all.

3.  Music

The music at concerts generally stinks.  That’s because the bands are so sick and tired of singing the same songs over and over again, they fuss with them.  They change the way they sing them, they get the audience to sing them, they add something too them, or leave something out.  I hate that.

Sometimes you may also discover that the band has an incredible mixer and producer and so they sound MUCH better on CD than they do live.  I seriously doubt that’s the case with the Avett Brothers, but I’d rather not find out and have my image of them shattered like that.

4.  Riffs

I am not a musician so I am not impressed when the guitarist or drummer takes off on some self-indulgent, eternal riff that is meant to show off his or her talents.  In fact, I find them annoying.

5. Noise

Concerts are noisy.  Not only is the volume of the band always way too high for comfort, often, you cannot understand a word they are singing because they are practically eating the microphone.  Then you’ve got somebody standing next to you with a beer in their hand screaming at the top of their lungs and you’re thinking; “I paid money for this?”

No offense to concert lovers and no disrespect meant to the Avett Brothers.  I hope they have a great show and that everyone there has a wonderful time.  However, I won’t be in attendance and I think we can all agree that this is a good thing.

Think On It: God-Given Message and Witness

In 1826 he first attempted to preach.  An unconverted schoolmaster some six miles from Halle was the means…of turning to the Lord; and this schoolmaster asked him to come and help an aged, infirm clergyman in the parish.  Being a student of divinity he was at liberty to preach, but conscious ignorance had hitherto restrained him.  He thought, however, that by committing some other man’s sermon to memory he might profit the hearers, and so he undertook it.  It was slavish work to prepare, for it took most of a week to memorize a sermon, and it was joyless work to deliver it, for there was none of the living power that attends a man’s God-given message and witness.  His conscience was not yet enlightened enough to see that he was acting a false part in preaching another’s sermon as his own; nor had he the spiritual insight to perceive that it is not God’s way to set up a man to preach who knows not enough of either His Word or the life of the Spirit within him to prepare his own discourse.  How few even among preachers feel preaching to be a divine vocation and not a mere human profession; that a ministry of the truth implies the witness of experience; and that to preach another man’s sermon is, at best, unnatural walking on stilts!

–Arthur T. Pierson from George Muller of Bristol, page 35.

Christians and Goal Setting – Part 2

In the last post on this topic, we talked about God’s sovereignty over His creation and of how, ultimately, we are not in control of our own lives, we do not create our own reality.

The truth we will look at today is closely aligned with the truth of God’s sovereignty.  In fact, it is built upon it.  As a Christian, when it comes to goal setting and achievement, I must understand that;

I am not my own.

Paul tells us this in the context of sexual immorality when he writes to the Corinthians that they are to…

¹⁸Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. ¹⁹Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; ²⁰you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body. (1 Corinthians 6:18-20, NIV)

The point Paul is making is that we simply cannot do whatever we want to do.  The reason for that is because we belong to God, not to ourselves.

For example, is it acceptable for me to borrow my friend’s car and then proceed to paint it hot pink?  Of course not.  Why?  Because the car doesn’t belong to me, therefore I cannot do with it whatever I please.  I must treat it in the way that my friend would want me to treat it.

The same is true with this life that we live.  As Christians, we have been bought with a price and that price was the precious blood of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ.  We do not belong to ourselves.  We therefore cannot simply do whatever we want in this life and leave God and His will out of our thinking and planning.

This means two very important things to us:

• Our goals must never violate God’s commands nor offend His character as they are revealed in Scripture.
• Our goals must align with God’s priorities.  What is important to Him, must be important to us.

Consider a parable that Jesus told His disciples in Matthew 25:

¹⁴“Again, it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his property to them. ¹⁵To one he gave five talents^[a] of money, to another two talents, and to another one talent, each according to his ability. Then he went on his journey. ¹⁶The man who had received the five talents went at once and put his money to work and gained five more. ¹⁷So also, the one with the two talents gained two more. ¹⁸But the man who had received the one talent went off, dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money.

¹⁹“After a long time the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them. ²⁰The man who had received the five talents brought the other five. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with five talents. See, I have gained five more.’

²¹“His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’

²²“The man with the two talents also came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with two talents; see, I have gained two more.’

²³“His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’

²⁴“Then the man who had received the one talent came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. ²⁵So I was afraid and went out and hid your talent in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.’

²⁶“His master replied, ‘You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed? ²⁷Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest.

²⁸” ‘Take the talent from him and give it to the one who has the ten talents. ²⁹For everyone who has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. ³⁰And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ (NIV)

The servants did not have the option of doing whatever they wished with the talents they were given.  They had to be about the master’s business and to use His money the way the Master wanted it to be used.  They were to work and live according to the Master’s will and priorities.

When we examine our lives in the context of the goals we set and what we are trying to achieve do we understand that we are not our own?

Other posts in this mini-series:

• Introduction
• Part 1

Blogged Bible Study: Ephesians 6:5-8 (Part 2)

Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart, as you would Christ, not by way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but as servants of Christ, doing the will of the God from the heart, rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man, knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord whether he is slave or free.  (Ephesians 6:5-8, ESV)

When Paul tells us that we are to “obey” our earthly masters, he is using the Greek word hypakouoi, which means to listen to and then to comply or to simply do what you are told to do.  But we all do this on the job right?  We do it because if we don’t, we get fired.

Let’s look at this again, because Paul adds some qualifiers.  We’re not talking about simply doing what we are told to do, there is more to it than that, a lot more.

“…with fear and trembling”

The word “fear” in this verse (phobos in the Greek) is where we get our English word, “phobia” from.  It literally means; terror, reverence, respect, honor, and awe.

“…with a sincere heart”

The word “sincere” is the Greek word haplotes and it means single, simple, and pure.  It means to do something without ulterior motive.

The word “heart” in this phrase is the Greek word kardia and in the New Testament its only meaning is figurative, never literal.  It refers to the seat of the desires, feelings, affections, and passions.

Paul is saying that our motives for work are to be pure and selfless.  In other words, we don’t do it for advancement or promotions, or even a paycheck, we do it as an act of obedience, service and worship to God.

“…as you would Christ…as servants of Christ”

Whatever the Christian does, he or she is to do as unto the Lord.  This is what Paul describes in a corollary passage in Colossians 3 where he writes;

Slaves, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord.  Whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord and not for men… (vs. 22-23, ESV, emphasis mine)

Paul is calling for Christian slaves, and Christian employees, to alter their standards of work and make it completely different from the standards the world sets.

Paul makes work a heart issue.  It is not about compliance alone.  It’s about serving your employer as if he or she were Jesus Christ Himself.

The ideal for us is to look at our daily work, whatever and wherever that may be, as God’s will and therefore engage in it not by constraint or carelessly but because it is God’s will.

I struggle with this, sometimes intensely.  There are so many “What if’s” that fly in and out of my mind and heart.

What if…

• My boss is not a Christian?
• I am being treated unfairly?
• I’m being taken advantage of?
• I hate my job?
• I don’t like the people I am working with or for?
• I haven’t gotten a raise in three years?
• They passed me up for promotion…again?
• They give me more work and do not increase my pay?

These questions are nothing more than an attempt to find excuses for having a negative attitude towards my job.  I want a reason for my half-hearted effort.  I want justification for my complaints, my gripes, and for giving less than my best effort on the job.

But who am I working for?  Who is it that I am trying to please?  What are my motives?  Am I working for the Lord or for men?  Because if it truly is God I am working for then how can I offer God anything less than an act of pure devotion and worship?

This word from the Apostle Paul is a hard word indeed.  But that doesn’t give me an excuse to disobey, it only makes me more dependent on God’s grace to sustain me and for the power of the Holy Spirit to make this real in my life, and yours.

I encourage you to visit the Blogged Bible Study Page over at Philter 48 and read the posts from the other writers on this chapter.

Blogged Bible Study: Ephesians 6:5-8 (Part 1)

When I read through Ephesians and come to chapter 6, I typically focus my attention on Paul’s description of the “full armor of God.”  This time however, when I came to chapter 6, I was arrested by Paul’s words in verses 5-8:

Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart, as you would Christ, not by way of eye service, as people-pleasers, but as servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man, knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is slave or free.  (Ephesians 6:5-8, ESV)

I was drawn to these verses because I was deeply convicted by them.  This post is a result of what the Holy Spirit has been teaching me and working into me.  I have not “arrived.”  In fact, I’m not even close.  This word from God is hard for me, very hard indeed, and I imagine, for many others as well.  So as you read these posts, please understand that it comes from the heart of someone in the midst of the struggle, not from someone who thinks he already has it all figured out.

This post is part 1 of 2.  There is simply so much here I could not cram it all into one post without it being so long no one would bother reading it.

At first glance we may not think this passage has much to say to us.  After all, we are not slaves.  In Paul’s time however, fully one-third of the population of Ephesus was made up of slaves.  In the Roman Empire, slavery was one of the key factors of its economy.

People became slaves for several reasons:

• They were born into slavery.
• They were sold or abandoned by their parents.
• The were taken captive in a war.
• They could not pay off their debts.
• They voluntarily sold themselves into slavery for financial or personal reasons.

In the Roman world slaves were at the lowest level in the social order.  They had no rights whatsoever and were completely and utterly dependent upon their masters for everything.  Consequently, this opened the door for a great deal of abuse and cruelty.  This was not always the case however.  In some families, slaves were given ranks of power and privilege.

Slavery also existed among the Israelites, but slaves were viewed very differently.  In the Hebrew world, slaves were considered fellow citizens and had certain rights under the law.  They were considered to be a part of the family and could even inherit all of the master’s wealth upon his death.

In this passage, Paul uses the Greek word doulus for “slave.”  A doulus was typically an indentured servant, or a person whose rights and services had been obtained by his master.  The word doulus could also mean someone who had placed him or herself under the will or interests of another.

It is this meaning that Paul uses in Romans 6:16 when he writes;

Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? (ESV)

In Ephesians 6, Paul is not interested in upsetting the cultural order of Ephesus, he is telling salves (and in the next verse, masters) how they should be living as followers of Christ.  That is not to say that Paul condones slavery.  In 1 Corinthians 7:20-24 Paul does not discourage a slave from seeking his freedom through righteous means.  In fact, slavery eventually disappeared from the culture of the Roman Empire and eventually most of the world through the influence of Christianity.  Paul’s instructions however, did subvert the concept of slavery by encouraging both slave and master to look beyond one another and to Christ.

So, why does this passage apply to us today?  It should be quite obvious by now shouldn’t it?  Paul’s instructions are not only to slaves in the cultural context of Ephesus during the first century but to anyone who is in service to another.

If you have a job, you are in essence a slave, a doulus to the company you work for.  Does that offend you?  Are we not offering our services to the company in exchange for their provision for our needs through a paycheck?  That makes us a doulus.  So this passage in Ephesians applies to us, right now, where we live.

Tomorrow, we will learn how we are to apply Paul’s instructions to our work lives.

I encourage you to visit the Blogged Bible Study Page over at Philter 48 and read the posts from the other writers on this chapter.

Think On It: Was Today Better Than Yesterday?

Fixing a bug is (usually) easy. Something is broken. You know it’s broken, because someone reported it. If you can reproduce the bug, then fixing the bug means correcting whatever malfunction caused it and verifying that it is no longer reproducible. If only all problems were this simple!

Not every problem or challenge is quite so discrete, though. Most important challenges in life manifest themselves as large, insurmountable amorphous blobs of potential failure. This is true of software development, career management, and even lifestyle and health.

A complex and bug-riddled system needs to be overhauled. Your career is stagnating by the minute. You are steadily letting your sedentary computer-programming desk-bound lifestyle turn your body into mush.

All of these problems are much bigger and harder to just fix than a bug. They’re all complex, hard to measure, and comprised of many different small solutions–some of which will fail to work!

Because of this complexity, we easily become demotivated by the bigger issues and turn our attention instead to things that are easier to measure and easier to quickly fix. This is why we procrastinate. And the procrastination generates guilt, which makes us feel bad and therefore procrastinate some more.

I’ve struggled with getting and staying in shape for as long as I can remember. Indeed, when you’re miserably out of shape, “just get in shape” isn’t a concept you can even grasp much less do something concrete about. And to make it harder, if you do something toward improving it, you can’t tell immediately or even after a week that anything has changed. In fact, you could spend all day working on getting in shape, and a week later you might have nothing at all to show for it.

This is the kind of demotivator that can jump right up and beat you into submission before you even get started.

I’ve recently been working on this very problem in earnest. Going to the gym almost daily, eating better–the works. But even when I’m getting with the program in a serious way, it’s hard to see the results. As I was wallowing in my demotivation one recent evening, my friend Erik Kastner posted a message to Twitter with the following text:

Help me get my $%!^ in shape…ask me once a day: “Was today better than yesterday?” (nutrition / exercise) – today: YES!

When I read this I realized that it was the ticket to getting in shape. I recognized it from the big problems I have successfully solved in my life. The secret is to focus on making whatever it is you’re trying to improve and make better today than it was yesterday. That’s it. It’s easy. And, as Erik was, it’s possible to be enthusiastic about taking real, tangible steps toward a distant goal.

I’ve also recently been working on one of the most complex, ugliest Ruby on Rails applications I’ve ever seen. My company inherited it from another developer as a consulting project. There were a few key features that needed to be implemented and a slew of bugs and performance issues to correct. When we opened the hood to make these changes, we discovered an enormous mess. The company employing us was time- and cash-constrained, so we didn’t have the luxury to start from scratch, even though this is the kind of code you throw away.

So, we trudged along making small fix after small fix, taking much longer to get each one finished than expected. When we started, it seemed like the monstrosity of the code base would never dissipate. Working on the application was tiring and joyless. But over time, the fixes have come faster, and the once-unacceptable performance of the application has improved. This is because we made the decision to make the code base better each day than it was the day before. That sometimes meant refactoring a long method into several smaller, well-named methods. Sometimes it meant removing inheritance hierarchies that never belonged in the object model. Sometimes it just meant fixing a long-broken unit test.

But since we’ve made these changes incrementally, they’ve come for “free.” Refactoring one method is something you can do in the time you would normally spend getting another cup of coffee or chatting with a co-worker about the latest news. And making one small improvement is motivating. You can clearly see the difference in that one thing you’ve fixed as soon as the change is made.

You might not be able to see a noticeable difference in the whole with each incremental change, though. When you’re trying to become more respected in your workplace or be healthier, the individual improvements you make each day often won’t lead directly to tangible results. This is, as we saw before, the reason big goals like these become so demotivating. So, for most of the big, difficult goals you’re striving for, it’s important to think not about getting closer each day to the goal, but rather, to think about doing better in your efforts toward that goal than yesterday.

I can’t, for example, guarantee that I’ll be less fat today than yesterday, but I can control whether I do more today to lose weight. And if I do, I have a right to feel good about what I’ve done. This consistent, measurable improvement in my actions frees me from the cycle of guilt and procrastination that most of us are ultimately defeated by when we try to do Big Important Things.

You also need to be happy with small amounts of “better.” Writing one more test than you did yesterday is enough to get you closer to the goal of “being better about unit testing.” If you’re starting at zero, one additional test per day is a sustainable rate, and by the time you can no longer do better than yesterday, you’ll find that you’re now “better about unit testing” and you don’t need to keep making the same improvements. If, on the other hand, you decided to go from zero to fifty tests on the first day of your improvement plan, the first day would be hard, and the second day probably wouldn’t happen. So, make your improvements small and incremental but daily.

Small improvements also decrease the cost of failure. If you miss a day, you have a new baseline for tomorrow.

One of the great things about this simple maxim is that it can apply to very tactical goals, such as finishing a project or cleaning up a piece of software, or it can apply to the very highest level goals you might have. How have you taken better action today for improving your career than you did yesterday? Make one more contact, submit a patch to an open source project, write a thoughtful post and publish it on your weblog. Help one more person on a technical forum in your area of expertise than you did yesterday. If you every day you do a little better than yesterday toward improving yourself, you’ll find that the otherwise ocean-sized proposition of building a remarkable career becomes more tractable.

Give it a try:

Make a list of the difficult, complex personal or professional improvements you’d like to make. It’s OK if you have a fairly long list. Now, for each item in the list, think about what you could do today to make yourself or that item better than yesterday. Tomorrow, look at the list again.

Was yesterday better than the day before? How can you make today better? Do it again the next day. Put it on your calendar. Spend two minutes thinking about this each morning.  (Chad Fowler, from his book The Passionate Programmer he is the CTO of InfoEther, Inc.)

The content of this post was originally published on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss.  A highly recommended and fascinating read any day of the week.

Why Go There?

Have you ever been driving somewhere and someone cuts you off in traffic, almost causing an accident?  You may scream and maybe even curse.  You are angry and you feel wronged as you watch the jerk that cut you off just drive away as if he didn’t even notice what he had done.  You don’t think it’s right that people just get away with stuff like that.  After all, who does that guy think he is anyway?

Then your mind starts to wander…

I always imagine a few miles later driving by the offending driver, who has been pulled over by a police officer and is being given a ticket for reckless driving, or if I’m really angry, I imagine him being arrested.  I see him in handcuffs and being shoved into the back of the cruiser and his car being towed away.  I picture myself driving by and laughing at him, slowing down just enough so that he can see my face as I mock him, and he knows that I am that poor guy he was so rude to just a few miles back.  And he feels ashamed and vows that he will never do anything like that again.

It’s a revenge fantasy.  Ever have one?

This morning I was imagining a confrontation with someone I know.  This person had asked me to do something and I had politely refused.  For some reason I imagined this person getting upset and saying something critical to me.  I then imagined myself really telling them how I felt about the whole thing.  I was biting, cruel and downright mean.  And it felt strangely good telling this person off in my mind like that.

Then I realized what I was doing and I wondered; “Why go there?”  There is no way these thoughts are honoring to God.

Why do we insist on imagining these horrible scenarios like that?  Why do we entertain revenge fantasies?  Why not reconciliation fantasies instead?

The next time a jerk cuts me off in traffic, perhaps I can imagine meeting up with the guy later on down the road and he apologizes to me for being such a rude driver.  I smile politely and explain that I am sure that I’ve done that to people before so I am willing to offer him plenty of grace.  He asks me what I mean by that and so I then take the opportunity to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with him.

Sound crazy?  Maybe so, but isn’t that more God honoring than my gaining some sort of perverse pleasure imagining someone else’s misfortune?

Consider what Paul tells us;

¹⁴Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. ¹⁵Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. ¹⁶Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. ¹⁷Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. ¹⁸If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. ¹⁹Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” ²⁰To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” ²¹Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Romans 12:14-21, ESV)

Think On It: Images

Images are very important in our culture and in our time.

It has been said to the point of being cliche that a picture is worth a thousand words.  That is because images have the power to capture our minds and emotions in a way few things can.

It doesn’t matter if they are images in film, photographs, or within our own line of sight or memories, we are deeply, profoundly, and sometimes irrevocably impacted by what we see.

Consider this image:

It is a piece of the Berlin Wall on display outside of my office building.  As soon as I saw it, I remembered the year I graduated from high school and watching it come down.  The tears of joy I saw on people’s faces as they dismantled that wall and even some looks of fear and trepidation have stayed with me all these years and were all brought back in a flood of memory as I stood in the rain this morning and looked at this image from history.

Images.  They are powerful.

What images are most powerful to you?

Christians and Goal Setting – Part 1

As I mentioned in the Introduction to this series, I have been exploring the concept of goal setting in relationship to my faith.

After many years of setting personal goals, I came to the process this year feeling very differently than I have in years past.  I was uninspired.  I was convinced that my goals were empty and meaningless.  These feelings promoted me to pray and to search the Bible for wisdom.

In that exploration I believe God opened my eyes to four foundational truths that create a clear distinction between the way our culture teaches us we should set and acheive goals and why, and God’s way for setting and achieving goals.

These posts are an explanation of what I have learned and some of the changes I am making.  You will see that they are primarily heart attitudes and mental shifts that are taking place here.  The mechanics and logistics of setting and achieving goals are pretty standard I think, but it’s the mentalities and beliefs that go before and with the process that make the difference.

The first truth we must embrace when it comes to goals is this:

God is sovereign.

I know that seems rather obvious, but I think recognition of this truth is essential if we are going to go about setting goals properly.

The Bible has this to say about God’s sovereignty in relationship to our plans:

In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps. (Proverbs 16:9, NIV)

Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails. (Proverbs 19:21, NIV)

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. (James 4:13-15, NIV)

In the hundreds of self-help and business books I have read one of the first and foremost rules regarding goal setting is generally stated something like this;

You are in charge of your destiny.  You are totally responsible for everything in your life.  You can accomplish and have anything you want if you can identify what it is that you desire.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong!

The bottom line is that God is charge, not us.  It is His purpose that will prevail, not ours.  We have the opportunity to work towards God’s purposes in relationship with Him but we will never accomplish anything, go anywhere, or have and do anything without Him and apart from His will.

They very fact that we are able to get up in the morning and breath and work and live is because it pleases God to allow us to do so.  As Colossians 1:15-17 tells us:

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.  For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.  And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. (ESV)

Can we look at passaages like the ones shared here and honestly believe that we are in control of our own destinies?  Only a fool would think so.  Therefore a humble recognition of this truth is where the whole practice of setting goals and making plans must begin.