January 8, 2012

Goals Part Two: January 3, 2012

TODAYS WORD FOR TUESDAY JANUARY 3, 2012

GOALS

PART TWO

DEFINITION:

The terminal point in a race; the finish line.

SCRIPTURE:

I’ve got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward to Jesus. I’m off and running and I am not turning back. So let’s keep focused on that goal, those of us who want everything that God has for us. If any of you have something else in mind, something less then total commitment, God will clear your blurred vision. We are on the right track, let’s stay on it. Philippians 3:14-15 Message translation.

KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE:

Other than Jesus Himself, no man has made a greater impact on the development and spreading of the gospel than the Apostle Paul. He wrote thirteen books of the New Testament and these books, inspired by God, still have an impact on the lives of people every day. Read the verse that we have put above. Even though it is the Message Translation it spells out clearly the commitment that Paul had to reach his goal of serving Jesus with every ounce of energy that he had. He was focused on his goal.

Enoch was a man that had a clear goal to serve God. There are only 9 verses in the Bible referring to Enoch but what these verses said was that he was a man dedicated to walking with God every day. The scriptures only state that two men “walked with God.” The other man was Noah. We will talk about these two men later in another devotional.

Even before we were married we set a life-time goal. That goal was that our hearts would be broken so that we would be able to see the world as a world in need and that God would use our lives to be a witness to a lost and needy world. God honored this request that we gave Him in ways that we would never have dreamt. We learned at a very young age that when we asked God for something that if it was in His will He would honor it. We also learned that most of the time our goals, in God’s mind, were small and He wanted us to be involved in something bigger. We learned clearly and very quickly that any project we attempted, whether large or small, would fail unless we allowed God to take over.

It was just a few weeks after we were married that we were off to Korea. We went with the goal of letting the Lord use us as He saw fit on a mission field. We also were directed to set up some orphanages for World Vision. Our goal was to stay one year and then move on to what God would have for us next.

God’s plans for us were bigger than we could have imagined. Our time in Korea lasted only about five months. But in those five months God took over and used us to establish 145 orphanages, build a five story office building for World Vision, hire and train over 100 translators and set up and run a 22 day city wide evangelistic crusade in Seoul Korea which was attended by over 350,000 people with thousands coming to find Jesus as their Savior.

We set our goals and then asked God to open the doors. We were willing to attempt whatever an open door offered. We were young, dedicated and ready to be used of God. None of this could have been accomplished if we depended on our abilities and talent.

Over these last 54 years together we have been blessed with many such opportunities and through them all we learned that when we asked God to open doors and believed that He would --- He did. God has blessed us in a unique way but it all began with us by setting goals and asking God to open the door.

You can do the same. It may be to make it possible to talk to an associate about their relationship with God. It may be to ask God to give you a ministry of prayer. Set your goal and then let God do His thing.

LEARNING:

Our memory verse for this week is found in Mark 16:15.

And Jesus said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.”

PRAYER:

Open my heart today to being committed to the goal of serving You. Help me to seek opportunities to serve You and to honor Your name. Give me then the strength and faith to expect great things to happen. Help me to rely totally on Your direction, Your power and Your love.

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