1 Kings 5:1-12, 6:38
Last week we looked at some questions to ask ourselves when setting goals. Here are five other areas to consider.
To achieve our aim, cooperation is required. First, we cooperate with God by agreeing to His plan. In agreeing, we are surrendering our way in order to do it His way. Secondly, we enlist the cooperation of others, starting with prayer support.
To reach a goal entails consistency—a steady effort toward the objective. Since God helped us to establish our aim, we can remain fixed on accomplishing it. Even if others discourage us, we stay the course as the Lord has asked.
Clear focus means fixing our eyes on the purpose ahead of us and not allowing ourselves to be distracted. By remembering that God set the goal for us, we will not allow others to change our direction.
Often the goals we are given by the Lord require courage to act upon them. Courage here is the willingness to take action without knowing the outcome—we can do that because it is God who asks. As we deepen our trust in Him, courage will come. Developing a lifestyle of conscious dependence on God is important. It is too easy to put our own strength into achieving goals and forget about depending on God. True success requires dependence.
These items are not a standard by which to measure ourselves; they are pointers to help us move in the right direction. If you haven't set goals, seek out someone who has and learn how. Be open to a new way of working.
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Charles Frazier Stanley was born September 25, 1932, in the small town of Dry Fork, Virginia. The only child of Charley and Rebecca Stanley, Charles came into the world during a time when the entire nation felt the grip of the Great Depression. To make matters worse, just nine months later, his father Charley died at the young age of 29.
However, Charles refused to let the Great Depression or the difficulties of his life define him. Instead, like his father and grandfather before him, he clung to God’s Word and took up the mantle to preach the gospel to whoever would listen.
Dr. Stanley’s motivation is best represented by the truth found in Acts 20:24, “Life is worth nothing unless I use it for doing the work assigned me by the Lord Jesus—the work of telling others the Good News about God's mighty kindness and love.” This is because, as he says, “It is the Word of God and the work of God that changes people’s lives.”
Dr. Stanley’s teachings can be heard weekly at First Baptist Church Atlanta, daily on “In Touch with Dr. Charles Stanley” radio and television broadcasts on more than 2,800 stations around the world, on the Internet at intouch.org, through the In Touch Messenger, and in the monthly, award-winning In Touch magazine.