Tuesday, January 4, 2005 · no responses · comments closed

I’ve never been a very goal-oriented person. I want to be, feel like I need to be, but I’ve not had a lot of success in this area.

At church, I’ve been hearing about goals from a number of sources in the past few months. I devote an entire lesson to priorities and time management in the leadership class I teach at Highlands, so I’m constantly reminding myself of the need to be more goal-oriented as I teach others.

More recently, my friend Jeff Poore has given me some simple tools to help in identify goals. Jeff is passionate about maturity, both for himself and for others, and he also practices what he preaches. Watching him has given me hope that I can actually set long-term goals and be successful in keeping them.

And then there are the sermons: my pastor, Chris Hodges, just finished a series — -it was great! — -drawn from John Maxwell’s book, Today Matters. This past Sunday Chris started Life on Purpose, also about goals.

And, of course, it’s the new year: time for making resolutions, setting goals, getting a plan. And for the first time in my life, I feel like I’m in a position to do this in a meaningful way.

Highlands is in a 3-week period of prayer for the new year, so I’ve been thinking about what I want to accomplish in 2005, what to ask God’s blessing on, where to focus my energy and attention. And all that’s good — very good.

But I was brought up short this morning as I looked through my music, searching for prayer songs to use in my worship time. I already had in mind a few songs that I thought were appropriate for this season, songs focused on giving myself wholly to God. The Holy Spirit led me to my Twila Paris collection. As I looked through the titles, “Delight My Heart” caught my eye. The lyrics provide the perfect counterweight to this focus on setting goals:

So many plans, so many dreams
So many hopes in me
So many goals tending to schemes
What am I meant to be?

Lead me back into the simple treasure I once knew
I will rest here in the perfect worth of knowing You

I will delight my heart in You, O Lord
I will delight my heart in You
All of the joy You give is what I long for
I will delight my heart in You

Don’t get me wrong: there’s nothing wrong with setting goals, praying for goals, asking God to show you His goals for your life, seeking His blessing on what you want to do with your life. These are good things, and I fully intend to do them.

For me, at least, the tendency is to get so caught up in the plan that I forget the real purpose of my life — to simply enjoy and delight in God. This song reminded me of what I already knew, what David so beautifully wrote in Psalm 27:4 — 

One thing I ask of the Lord,
this is what I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord
and to seek Him in His temple.

Bottom line, the goal is not about goals, it’s about God. He’s the source of fulfillment, not the planning and the doing.

Even as I make my plans for the year and commit them to God, I will be listening to Twila so that I can keep my heart focused on what matters most.

You can read the complete lyrics here.