God’s Amazing Goals for Your Life Begin Here

Sometimes the dreams and goals you have for life are good goals—even godly goals—but just not God’s goals. Your expectations of life are just that—yours. God has His own set of plans, and He isn’t telling.

(Photo by Photodune)

God may lead you initially one direction simply to take you another.

• He may give you a vision as a single, or for a family, or for a ministry only so that He can sanctify you by his grace in experiencing a slammed door.
• Slammed doors do more than bend your nose; they keep your heart pliable, sensitive, and available to God’s leading.

Not only does He keep secret the difficult valleys you’ll experience (and many of the mountaintops), but also the tremendous lessons you’ll glean no other way. Lessons you didn’t know you needed to learn. Lessons you’ll thank Him for one day.

Very often, we fail to recognize God using us significantly because we define God “using us” in terms of what we consider significant: results.

God’s Goals: How God Defines Results

God often defines results in terms of character. Words like “productivity” and “efficiency” remain conspicuously absent from the “fruit of the Spirit” (Gal. 5:22-23). These results of God working in our lives all reflect character—His character. Character alone produces godly results.

God knows our character will scale.

He who is faithful in a very little thing is faithful also in much, and he who is unrighteous in a very little thing is unrighteous also in much. —Luke 16:10

The sluggard in the book of Proverbs found his life suddenly ruined because he assumed “a little sleep, a little slumber,” amounted to nothing (Prov. 24:33-34). But little things make up big things.

• Pennies make dollars.
• Bricks make walls.
• Days make years.
• Verses make Bibles.

Little things matter, and when little things represent faithfulness to God, they are crucial to our preparation for an expansion of our influence.

(Photo: By Pethrus. Own work. CC-BY-SA-4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

What You Do Matters to God

We often can fall for the thinking that because what we do seems small, or behind-the-scenes, or insignificant, or unequal with our abilities or qualifications, that what we do matters little. After all, if we foul up, no big deal. The world still turns. Nobody notices. Few seem to care.

Except God.

God’s goals for your life begin with your character.

Tell me what you think: How do you measure results in your life? To leave a comment, just click here.