TODAY IS…

a great day to ask God to help set your goals.

“Then He said to them, ‘Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”  Luke 12:15 NIV

Can we really claim to love the Lord and then turn around and completely disregard His instruction?

Perhaps we think this statement does not apply to us, but let us consider it for a moment: When we set goals for our lives, on what are we basing them? We should be looking to God for guidance when we set goals, but many of us don’t do that. We succumb to the pressures and the temptations of society and far too frequently we allow greed and envy to control our objectives. We allow advertisers on television, radio, and in print to convince us that our goal should be to buy this car or that TV or this particular phone.

Our goals slowly become more material based and less spiritual based and as a result our time is committed to the efforts to acquire these material possessions.

Jesus’ brother James warned Jewish Christians living outside of Palestine that they should exercise caution in making plans without including God in the process.

“Instead, you ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.’” (James 4:15 NIV).

For many of us it is difficult to allow God to be responsible for the direction our lives take. Our confidence is not always what it should be because our ability to see things as God sees, and to understand things as God does, is simply not adequate and our trust is not great enough to take God at His word and accept His promises.

“For the Lord God is our sun and our shield. He gives us grace and glory. The Lord will withhold no good thing from those who do what is right.” (Psalm 84:11 NLT).

And what is right is to ask God to light the way for us and to help us determine our goals.

We would all do well to remember that God put us here for His pleasure, for His glory, and to achieve His purpose. Those material things that we focus on, which cause us to lose sight of many of the teachings of Christ, will not necessarily be denied us if we are living our lives and working towards goals that have been blessed by God. He loves us so He will deny us nothing, but it would do us all well to step back and examine our goals and the influence behind them.

It is acceptable to desire to use your talents and abilities to enrich your life materially, as long as you have God’s blessing, and you can receive that quite easily. All that is required is that you ask God to help you set your goals in the first place. When you do that, everybody wins, and the Lord is happy.

And if God is happy with you, how can you be unhappy in life?

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Taken from “TODAY IS….A Gift From God”, (C) 2013 Tony Casson