Goal Setting: The Key to Success - Part 1

Welcome to this weekend's In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley. Career, educational, and financial goals can be worthy endeavors, but they shouldn't be a Christian's main objective. Be challenged to look beyond the typical life pursuits as you learn the key to success in setting goals.

If you knew you absolutely could not fail, what three goals would you set for your life? In your present spiritual condition, could you honestly ask God to help you achieve those goals? Do you really want God's very best for your life?

Are you willing to settle for just what you can do? Well, remember, if you keep doing what you're doing, you'll keep getting what you're getting. And what you have to ask is this, do I really want the best that God could provide for my life? And remember that we have defined success as the continuing achievement of becoming the person God wants us to become and accomplishing those goals that God has helped us to set. Well, I want you to turn, if you will, to Philippians chapter three, because in this message, I want to talk about goal setting, the key to success.

Well, one of the most goal oriented people in all the Bible is the apostle Paul. And in this third chapter, just want us to read a few verses of it here. It's not our purpose to expound upon this particular passage, but simply to use it as a point of beginning here concerning a man who was certainly highly motivated and certainly had many goals in his life. But if you'll notice beginning in verse seven of the third chapter, he says, But whatever things were gained to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things, everything to be lost in view of the surpassing value of what? Knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whom I've suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish in order that I may gain Christ. And then he goes on, if you'll notice in verse ten, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, the fellowship of His sufferings being conformed to His death in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I've already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on in order that I may lay hold of that for which I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus.

Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet. But one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the awkward call of God in Christ Jesus. Here is a man who was not wasting time nor his life, but a man whose life was committed to one thing.

He had an overwhelming sense of purpose and direction for his life. Well, when I think about this whole idea of goal setting, one of the things that comes to mind is simply this. People say, well, is goal setting scriptural? That is, if you want to live a godly life, is goal setting scriptural?

Well, sometimes a person will say, no, I do not believe it is, and I can give you a couple of verses. So I love to begin with any question to ask the question, well, what does God say? So I want you to turn, if you will, to Hebrews chapter thirteen, because in this passage there is a verse that oftentimes people will use and they'll say, well, if this is true, why should you set goals? Well, the writer of Hebrews says in verse five of this thirteenth chapter, let your character be free from the love of money, being content with what you have, for he himself has said, I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you.

Now listen to what he does not say. He does not say, let your character be free from money, being content with what you have, for he himself has said, I'll never desert you, nor ever forsake you. He says, don't let your life, your character be driven by the love of money. Now go back, if you will, to Philippians chapter four. And if you'll notice in this verse, Paul here is speaking of contentment and what he's learned. And he says in the eleventh verse of this fourth chapter, writing from a prison cell, by the way, he says, not that I speak from want, for I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am. Now here are two verses that says a person ought to be able to be content. One of them says, listen, you and I should not be driven by the love of money. And here's the apostle Paul from a prison saying that I have learned to be content with what I have.

Now, what does this mean? Oftentimes people say, well, this means that wherever you are in life, whatever you are and whatever you have, you should be content. When you look at this passage and you ask yourself the question, well, first of all, you have to ask yourself the question, what is contentment? Contentment is this, realizing that God has provided all that I need for my present happiness.

Now watch that. God has already provided all I need for my present happiness. Happiness and goal setting are not synonymous. Happiness and success are not synonymous. And so when we look at contentment, contentment is realizing that God has supplied everything I need for my present happiness. Now, does that mean that I'm to settle down, be satisfied, be content, so to speak, so that I do not strive to do better, be better, accomplish more, achieve more in my life?

No, it does not. I can be very, very content with my life and at the same time have goals out here that I believe God has laid upon my heart toward which I am working, toward which I desire to achieve and to accomplish. And so therefore, when a person says to be content and you shouldn't set goals, that means you'll just be satisfied where you are. Well, let me tell you why I know you don't believe that. How many of you are satisfied with what you know about God? You're just contented now, not going to learn anything else, you're just absolutely content with what you know about God. I don't think anybody in here feels that way.

Nobody, no one listening feels that way. How many of you are satisfied with your relationship to Christ? That is, you don't have an intention to grow, you're satisfied. How many of you are satisfied with what you know about the Bible?

No. You see, the truth is that God places in every single believer an insatiable, that means a never satisfying hunger and thirst. The paradox is I can be genuinely contented with my Lord. I can be delighted in Him. I can be satisfied with Him.

At the same time, there's this undercurrent of dissatisfaction and want to know more, want to grow deeper, want to understand more, want to understand His ways, want to know what real intimacy is all about. So when somebody uses those kind of verses to say, well, you shouldn't set goals for your life, the problem is I think they have a little problem with their thinking and they're a little bit lazy in their thinking. And I think it's very evident in the Scripture that God certainly desires that you and I set goals for our life. For example, we spent a whole message last time discussing the idea that God desires that you and I be successful in our life, not just success for success sake because as a believer, the overriding idea and theme of success is that I desire to achieve to become the person God wants me to be and to achieve or to accomplish the goals that God has set for me.

So therefore, that is a legitimate, scriptural, very scriptural foundation idea of what success is all about. So with that in mind, somebody says, well, now what's this goal business anyway? What is a goal? Well, you might say that a goal is an aim or a purpose or a sense of direction towards which you have moved all of your energies and desires and your life or all of your efforts. And so when I think about a purpose or an aim or some particular objective out there, that we all have those. And so what do we do?

We gear our life to move toward the accomplishment and the achievement of that particular goal or those goals. Now, when I think about the Scriptures and we listed some of these last time in the first message, but let's go back for just a moment and let me just name a few of these. Let's go back to Noah, for example. Remembering at this time in Noah's life that things had gotten so bad that the violence in the world was so absolutely corrupt and horrible. God said, I can't handle any more of this. I'm going to wipe out this whole crowd.

I'm going to destroy everything that I've created here. And then he said to Noah, he said, Noah is what he says in that sixth chapter of Genesis. Noah, build yourself an ark.

What's that? What's an ark? First of all, it hadn't rained because God had created the earth so that the canopy around the earth, the atmosphere, all the moisture we needed was there.

So, flood, rainstorm. Now remember this, I'm going to say this at least three times in this message. You're listening, say amen.

Amen. God never commands you to do anything. He will not equip you to do or provide you the resources to get it done. God will never require of you anything that he will not equip you to do or provide for you the resources to get it done. So he said, I want you to build an ark.

And he gave him all the instructions of how to do it and told him how to do it. So the goal that Noah had set for his life, set by God, was to build an ark in order to save civilization. Then we come along and we see Moses. God said to him, Moses, this is your life work. You to go to Pharaoh, challenge him and I want you to lead my Hebrew children out of Egyptian bondage to a promised land.

That was the goal, very clear. And you recall all the arguments that he had with God, finally he surrendered. Well you and I could go all through the Scriptures naming one biblical character after the other but where God gave them a specific goal. And as they followed that goal, God always gave them the resources.

He always told them how. And he always said to them, I'll be with you. So when we think about how God has worked in the lives of these men, then I want you to go back to Philippians for a moment. And look at this third chapter and let's look at the apostle Paul. You'll recall when he, turn to Philippians chapter three now. You'll recall when he was saved in that ninth chapter of Acts. And you'll recall immediately that he received his sight as he spoke with Ananias and the Spirit of God came upon him and anointed him for the work.

Then you'll recall that in the twentieth verse he says, And immediately he began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogue, saying, He's the Son of God. And so if you'll look to see what happened, immediately what was his goal? His goal, listen, remember now, having been a statesman and a Pharisee, having been an aggressive, an aggressive enemy of the church, doing everything in his power to kill, destroy Christians and to wipe out the very name of Jesus, immediately when God transformed him and saved him, his goal was different. Now his goal was not to lock up Christians and crucify them and and persecute them. But now his goal was to get the name of Jesus and the message of his resurrection to as many people as possible as quickly as possible.

It says immediately he began to go to the synagogues and to talk about Jesus. And so Paul was indeed a very gifted but a very goal oriented person. But what was the highest goal in this man's life? What was the goal that motivated him above everything else?

Here's what it was. His goal above everything else. Now watch this carefully. Listen, say amen. When our goals are God given and they will be right when they are God given, when we major on the God given goals and we major on the priority goal, God will move heaven and earth to enable us to accomplish those other goals that he set.

But there has to be a priority goal. What was the priority goal in the Apostle Paul's life? To know the Lord Jesus Christ, to know him in a personal, intimate way, and to know him to the degree that he says he would be conformed to the likeness of the Son of God.

What does the Bible say in Romans 8 29? That God Almighty has set as a goal for your life and my life. Every single one of us has this goal set by God. He says he predestined us to be conformed to the likeness of Christ, which means that our character would by whatever is necessary be shaped like the character of the Son of God. That's why he says this third chapter, that's the motivating goal of his life.

He says above all else, I leave everything else behind. He says to know him, the power of his resurrection. He said, I want to experience in my life, in my daily life, the same kind of awesome Holy Ghost, Holy Spirit power that Jesus Christ experienced when the Spirit of God raised him from the dead. I want to walk in the Spirit. I want to serve in the Spirit. I want to serve the living God in that kind of power, that kind of spirit. I want my life to count to the maximum of my potential.

I am willing to lay down my life if necessary in order for it to happen. So Paul's goals were very clear. And if you'll notice what he says, and I want you to notice a couple of verses, if you will, in this third chapter. And let's look, if you will, in the, look at two words here primarily, two phrases. Verse twelve, not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on. It means I diligently follow after. He says, pressing on means I zealously follow after.

It means that I'm attaching myself to. That is, he was absolutely committed at all costs to knowing the Son of God. Listen, it is as a result of that particular goal, that priority goal in his life, that you and I can read Romans and Galatians and first and second Corinthians and Ephesians and Colossians and Philippians and first and second Timothy and all of these letters.

What do we find in those letters? We find God giving him such awesome revelations, such understanding of the Christian life to whom he gave no one else. We find God doing in his life exactly what he desired.

I want to know him. I feverishly follow after him. Look what he says in verse thirteen. He says, reaching forward to what lies ahead. Like a runner, he says, stretching with every nerve and every muscle in my body, longing to know him, having an insatiable, hungering, thirsting, yearning desire. And it's very evident that that was the motivation that motivated him in searching and finding and watching and accomplishing and achieving the goals that God had set for his life. And if I should ask you, what goals has God set for your life? And I want to ask again, if you could set three goals in your life and know that you could not possibly fail no matter what, what would they be? Now I ask you that twice in the very beginning because I wanted you to have a little time to think about it.

I wonder how many people would have said honestly and sincerely, right up front, no hesitation, don't lie to yourself about it, don't raise your hand of course. I wonder how many of you would have mentioned a spiritual goal first of all. I wonder how many of you would have thought about some particular goal that you have financially or something you want to own or something you want to do. How many of you, your first goal had something to do with your relationship to Almighty God. When our goals and the priorities of our goals are right, God will do absolutely amazing things in a person's life.

And I realize the very idea of preaching about goals, some people would say, well that's not spiritual. Oh yes it is. Secondly, well that doesn't apply to me. Oh yes it does. Well I'm just a homemaker, it still applies.

Well I'm just this and I'm just that and I'm a this and I'm a that. Yes it does. If you will listen carefully you will understand goal setting does apply for you and apply to you for the simple reason. Listen, God desires that you be a success in your life to what He's called you to do because you're a child of God if you're saved and He has a purpose and a plan for your life and He's planned the best for you. Therefore, in order to have the best in your life, in order to accomplish what God has set up you to accomplish, you need to be wise enough to set goals that fit God's purpose and plan for your life. And I'm going to talk about in a few moments what happens when you do not set them.

And what does it mean about you when you do not set them? Well when I look at this passage of Scripture and here's a man who says I'm reaching forth. He says I'm pressing on. That is I'm not giving up, I'm not quitting.

It doesn't make any difference how difficult it gets. Stone left for dead in Lystra, jailed, beaten, shipwrecked, tried to assassinate him many, many times. Do you think he quit? No.

You know why? He was highly motivated. Motivated what? By a goal that God had given him. Listen, a goal so prized, a goal so valuable, nothing on the face of this earth could possibly stop him no matter what. And when God finished with him, he took him home.

Until then they couldn't kill him no matter how hard they tried. Now, when I think about the apostle Paul and think about the fact that God certainly in His Word is very evident by the characters of Scripture that God gave them goals and they accomplished those goals. When I look at the apostle Paul and think about the whole idea of what is a goal, it is a name. It is an objective. It is a purpose toward which we get our inside energy and motivation and desires headed toward a particular direction in order to accomplish and to achieve something. It is organized, planned stretching of my life. And you see, as long as you will stay where you are, emotionally, spiritually, physically, whatever it might be, you will indeed remain there.

Now listen carefully. Progress is made one step at a time. Great accomplishments are made up of a little accomplishment here, a little accomplishment there, a little accomplishment here, and a little accomplishment there. That's what adds up, the big accomplishments in life. Thank you for listening to Goal Setting, the key to success. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or InTouch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of InTouch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.