Do you ever feel like you are just slamming through your day to make it to the end, hopefully, unscathed and triumphant in achieving your goals? I know I do. Almost daily I feel as though I am pushing to be done faster, doing more, satisfying my desire for a full day and many tasks accomplished. I know that God has created us to be hard working, but He did not intend for us to be so busy that we become frustrated by our goals.
Why do we become frustrated when things don’t go our way? I have read in several Christian publications that goals, when directed by our own ambition, are blocked by other human beings, we become a multitude of ugly things. Namely, we can become angry, confused, sad, jealous, and downright nasty to those other people we view as impediments to our overall goals.
Now, if goals are God inspired and directed, almost always these goals are achievable without us spending all of our energy. God-led directions are not impossible and we can have confidence that He is pleased with our progress for the day. God rarely gives his children impossible tasks which would cause us to question His judgment and love. God’s directed goals for our lives bring us closer to Him and keep our attention on His bigger picture.
If my goal in life was to have a perfectly clean house every hour of the day, which I admit is usually the case, my children and other members of my family would easily stand in my way of achieving that goal. This would cause me to become bitter or angry because my goal has been impeded. If one of my goals in life is to have the perfect marriage with an obedient husband who would never question my choices and do everything I ask of him, it is certain that he would fail to live up to my goals for a “perfect marriage” and I would become sad or angry that my goal was once again destroyed.
We can take these human-centered goals and reevaluate them to find where we might have gotten mixed up, putting our own selfish goals over God’s true goals for our lives. I know that having a perfectly clean home is impossible with two children under the age of 4 unless I want to make them miserable by never allowing them to play or explore. I also know that having the perfect marriage where my husband is a doormat and a slave to my whims would make him feel unloved and resentful. However good these goals of mine might make me feel, they are incredibly selfish ones when we look closely at ourselves and our motives.
How do these goals become God-centered? We need to focus on bettering ourselves to serve others, not the other way around. Instead of having the goal to have a perfectly clean home every hour of the day which would almost certainly create misery for my kids, my goal should be to manage messes on a case-by-case basis. Who cares if the floor has toys and stuffed animals everywhere? These are signs of my children playing and appreciating the gifts we give to them. I need to focus on myself, desiring to be wise and slow to anger, a biblical standard for all parents. I should not expect my children to be mindful of their messes every single hour of the day. It just isn’t realistic! My new goal is to become the mother who is wise and slow to anger. This is God-centered goal making.
When it comes to my marriage, I need to rid my heart of the goal of perfecting my husband to obey me and be a slave to my whims. My husband is already perfect in the eyes of God, who is the real Lord of my husband’s life. When I seek to control his daily life, I am assuming I am God which I am definitely NOT. My goal as his wife should be to be a good homemaker and to serve him as his spouse. When you build up your spouse first before you seek self-gratification, the result is a happier marriage. This also goes for your spouse, but for the sake of this post, I am focusing on Me and YOU. We all need to work on our selves and make our goals God centered.
When our goals are built on self-centered desires of the heart, we can be assured that those goals will be impeded and that we will become frustrated. Keep your goals centered on biblical truths and pray often for God’s guidance. It’s not God holding me or you back from feeling fulfilled as a Christian, it’s all about us and what we believe to be the truth.
Millennial Mind 