Evotional.com - Mark Batterson

The Game of Life: Setting God-size Goals
07.06.05
Pastor Mark Batterson

This evotional continues The Game of Life series. Last week’s evotional focused on pursuing God-given passions. This week’s evotional focuses on setting God-sized goals. To sign up for the audio evotional (podcast) at www.theaterchurch.com.

I read a great story a few years ago about Monty Roberts, author of The Man who Listens to Horses. One of his defining moments was an assignment given one of his high school classes. A teacher had the students write about what they wanted to do when they grew up. Monty’s passion was horses. He wrote about owning a two-hundred acre ranch and breeding thoroughbred horses.

The teacher gave Monty an “F” for the assignment because he said it was unrealistic. The teacher knew that Monty was living in the back of a pickup truck and he told Monty that he could never amass enough money to buy a ranch and purchase breeding stock. Then he told Monty that he could rewrite the paper for a higher grade. I love Monty’s response: “You keep the F; I’m keeping my dream.”

I’m not sure what that teacher is doing these days. My guess is that he’s still giving “F’s” to dreamers! But I know where Monty Roberts is. He owns his ranch. He’s got an Equestrian Academy. And he’s even developed a novel method of training and communicating with horses called Join-Up. You can check it out at www.montyroberts.com.

I think there are two kinds of people in the world: naysayers and daydreamers. Thank God for daydreamers!

Scan the pages of Scripture and here is what you’ll find. Every person that God used in an extraordinary way had a crazy idea that made them look ridiculous. Noah looked crazy building an ark, but not when it started raining! Elijah looked crazy when he called down fire from heaven, but not when the sacrifice was consumed. David looked crazy attacking a giant with a slingshot, but not when Goliath was lying flat on his back! Jesus looked crazy hanging on a cross, but not when the stone rolled away and he walked out of the tomb!

Nehemiah is definitely part of the crazy club. A cupbearer in Babylon, with no education or experience in construction has no business rebuilding the wall of Jerusalem! What a crazy idea! But I think God-sized goals usually seem like crazy ideas because they are humanly impossible! They deserve an “F” if you’re grading based on realism. But that seems to be the litmus test in Scripture.

Define Success

In Nehemiah 2, the door of opportunity opens just enough for Nehemiah to quickly stick his foot in. The king of Babylon, Artaxerxes, notices that something is bothering Nehemiah and asks why. Nehemiah tells him that the wall of Jerusalem is in ruins. Then the king of Babylon asks the $64,000 question in Nehemiah 2:4: “What is it you want?”

Let me ask you the same question: what is it you want? If I asked you want you want relationally or occupationally or spiritually, could you define it? It’s the same question that I asked during the Course in Miracles evotional series in May. What are you hoping for? Praying for? Believing for? Jesus asks the question in Matthew 20::32: “What do you want me to do for you?” Do you know what you want God to do for you? I personally identified seven miracles during that series. Those seven miracles are what I would call God goals. They were conceived during our Pentecost fast.

If you don’t know what you want it’s sort of like playing a game without a goal or driving without a destination or planning without an objective. The actor and author, Ben Stein, said, “The indispensable first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: decide what you want.”

Here’s the cool thing about The Game of Life. It’s not a competition. It’s not a zero sum game. Everybody can win because everybody ought to have a different goal. Too many people turn the game of life into a competition to see who can make the most money or win the most popularity or become the most powerful. That’s the wrong way to play the game. The goal of the game of life is to set God-sized goals and go after them.

If you don’t know where you want to go then how do you know when you get there? If you don’t know what you want then how do you know when you get it? You don’t. Specificity is a barometer of faith. Vague goals are the byproduct of shallow faith. And it will result in a vague life. Hebrews 11:1 says, “Faith is being sure of what we hope for.” Well developed faith results in well defined goals.

In his book, The Success Principles, author Jack Canfield talks about what he calls his 2020 vision. He wants to sell a billion books by the year 2020 and raise $500 million for charity! He has a well defined goal.

So what if he only sells half a billion books? So what if he only raises a hundred million dollars for charity? Even if he “fails” to reach those goals, those goals will help him achieve far more than if he’d never set the goals in the first place.

Michelangelo said, “The greater danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it; but that it is too low and we reach it.”

Life List

In 1940, a fifteen-year-old boy named John Goddard sat down on a rainy afternoon with a blank piece of paper. He wrote “My Life List” at the top of the page and proceeded to write down 127 goals. Here are the few of the goals he has already achieved:

Climb Mt. Kilimanjaro
Learn Jujitsu
Explore the Amazon River
Land on and take off from an aircraft carrier
Run a mile in five minutes
Go on a church missions trip
Retrace the travels of Marco Polo and Alexander the Great
Visit the Pope
Study primitive culture in Borneo
Learn French, Spanish, and Arabic
Photograph Victoria Falls in Rhodesia (He got chased by a warthog, but got the pictures)
Milk a poisonous snake (He was bitten by a diamond back during one of his photo shoots)
Skin dive to 40 feet and hold breath 2 ½ minutes underwater
Play the flute and violin
Light a match with a 22 rifle
Build a telescope
Read the Bible from cover to cover
Circumnavigate the globe (He’s done it four times)
Visit the Birthplace of Grandfather Sorenson in Denmark
Publish an article in National Geographic magazine

Here are a few of the elusive goals he’s still going after:

Visit the moon (He set that goal in 1940 before anyone had escaped the earth’s atmosphere)
Read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica
Appear in a Tarzan movie
Study dragon lizards on Komodo Island (His boat broke down twenty miles from the island)
Visit every country of the world (He has thirty left to go)
Climb Mt. Everest

Let me make a simple observation: if John Goddard hadn’t set those goals he would have never achieved those goals. I doubt he would have done half of what he did if he hadn’t set a goal in the first place.

Goals create what psychologists refer to as “structural tension” in your brain. The brain wants to close the gap between your current reality and your goal. The brain is a goal-seeking organism. And if you don’t set godly goals you’ll pursue goals of lesser importance.

The Reticular Activating System

I can’t talk about setting God-sized goals without talking about the Reticular Activating System (RAS).

The RAS is a cluster of nerve cells in the brainstem that regulate alertness and attention. Right now we are bombarded by thousands of stimuli—sights and sounds and sensations. It is the job of the RAS to regulate which stimuli you pay attention to and which stimuli get ignored. If you paid equal attention to every sight and sound you’d go crazy so the RAS acts as a filter or screening device. The RAS determines what you notice and what goes unnoticed.

What does that have to do with goals? When you set a goal you create a category in your reticular activating system. You start noticing anything and everything that will help you achieve your goal.

When God gave me this vision of NCC meeting in movie theaters @ metro stops throughout the DC area, it totally messed me up. I can’t go see a movie at a theater without accessing it’s viability as a potential location. The same thing happened with Ebenezers. I can’t walk into a coffeehouse without noticing the décor or the music or the menu. My antenna is up and my radar is on. The dream of building a coffeehouse on Capitol Hill created a category in my reticular activating system.

Let me put it in computer terms. I had a conversion experience last week. I downloaded iTunes 4.9 and transferred all of my files from my old jukebox into that library. Then I created folders. I have a folder for worship and a folder for workout. I have a podcast folder. And I have my “chill out” folder.

In a sense, a goal is a folder. It’s a place where you can cut and paste anything and everything that will help you in your pursuit of that God-sized goal.

What does that have to do with Nehemiah?

Nehemiah’s RAS was working overtime! A passion was conceived in Nehemiah’s spirit in the month of Kislev and he set a God-sized goal: rebuild the wall of Jerusalem. Then between the month of Kislev (Nehemiah 2:1) and the month of Nisan (Nehemiah 2:1) he was filling his folder with anything and everything that would help him achieve that goal. How do I know that? Look at Nehemiah 2:7. He says to King Artaxerxes, “If it pleases the king, may I have letters to the governors of Trans-Euphrates, so that they will provide me safe conduct until I arrive in Judah? And may I have a letter to Asaph, keeper of the royal park, so he will give me timber to make beams for the gates of the citadel by the temple and for the city wall and for the residence I will occupy?”

Nehemiah wasn’t twiddling his thumbs between Kislev and Nisan. He was doing his homework and groundwork so that when the door of opportunity opened he was ready to walk through it. And his praying and planning paid off.

Set a Deadline

A goal is a passion with a deadline. A goal is a way of breaking a dream down into steps and stages. Nehemiah gives himself a deadline. Nehemiah 2:6 says, “I set a time.”

One of my passions is writing, but it took me thirteen years to write my first book, ID: The True You. My second manuscript only took three months. Here’s what helped me get over the hump. I wanted to write my first book before I turned thirty-five so I turned my birthday into a self-imposed deadline. And I wanted to give the book as a Christmas gift to our congregation. So I worked backwards and figured out when it had to get to the publisher. There were nights that I stayed up till 2 AM and got up at 5 AM to finish the manuscript. But I’m absolutely convinced that if I hadn’t had a deadline I’d still be writing it.

I think ideas have an expiration date or shelf life. If you don’t’ act on them they get stale and eventually the get moldy until the dream rots. That is the best description I can give of a God-given dream or passion or goal that isn’t acted upon. What would have nourished us begins to poisons us. The blessing becomes a curse. That is precisely what Proverbs 29:18 says, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” The word “perish” refers to fruit that is past it’s ripeness and beginning to rot. If you don’t have a God-sized goal you’re going after it begins to eat you up inside.

I know that not everyone is Nehemiah. Not everybody is called to rebuild the wall of Jerusalem. But all of us need spiritual and relational and occupational goals. That may mean setting 127 goals like John Goddard. That may mean setting one God-sized goal like Nehemiah. Or it may mean something in between those two extremes.

Most people don’t set their life goals in one afternoon like John Goddard. In fact, goals are moving targets. Think of your goals as “working documents” or “rough drafts.” It’s ok to refine your goals. It’s ok to add and subtract goals as God leads you. The key is setting some goals in the first place. I’d recommend a personal retreat. You need to spend some time outside the city examining the walls in the middle of the night like Nehemiah. And I’d recommend writing them down in a goal journal or create a goal folder on your computer. You need a way to keeping those goals front and center.

BHAG

I’m not sure we think of Him in these terms, but Jesus was a goal-setter. No one dreamed bigger dreams than Jesus.

In his book, Built to Last, Jim Collins talks about BHAGS—Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals. I know of no greater BHAG than Mark 16:15—what a God-sized goal. We call it the Great Commission, but it might be more fitting to think of it as the Great Dream or the Great Goal.

In a day when the average person never ventured beyond a thirty mile radius of their home, Jesus said, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.” We’re called to follow in Christ’s footsteps. And that means dreaming God-sized dreams and setting God-sized goals.

You may be struggling to define success and set goals. You may not know what you want. You may feel like the compass needle is spinning. Can I remind you that you are part of the greatest goal ever set? Every dime you give to missions and every time you share your faith and every ounce of energy you invest in ministry is a step closer to reaching the Great Goal.

All of us are part of something bigger than we are. We’re part of the Great Cause.

Climb the Right Ladder

In his book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey says, “Most people are so busy climbing the ladder of success that they fail to realize it’s leaning against the wrong wall.”

I think Nehemiah could have climbed all the way to the top of the Babylonian ladder. But he would have gotten all the way to the top and realized it was leaning against the wrong wall. And he would have been disappointed with the view! He would have been what I’d call a successful failure. He would have succeeded at the wrong thing. He would have climbed the wrong ladder leaning against the wrong wall. I love the way George Burns said it, “I’d rather be a failure at something I love than a success at something I hate.”

Nehemiah decided to move the ladder. He literally leaned the ladder against the wall of Jerusalem.

What's the point of climbing the ministry ladder or political ladder or business ladder if that isn't your God-given passion? It's pointless. You won't end up where you want to go. You might acquire a lot of money. You might get your fifteen minutes of fame. You might even earn high approval ratings. But if you don't enjoy what you do it's not worth doing until you get the gold watch at your retirement party!
Here’s the challenge twenty-somethings face when they go through the quarterlife crisis. Your life is no longer structured for you. When you went to college you had a clearly defined goal: get good grades and graduate. But when you graduate from school you have to (get to) set your own goals.

For what it’s worth, I think this is the same challenge that sixty-somethings face when they retire and go through what I’d call a fourth-quarter crisis. They have to decide what to do with the fifty hours a week they used to spend at work.

Let me relieve some of the pressure if you’re going through a quarterlife crisis or fourth-quarter crisis. It’s normal to feel discombobulated when you go through a major life transition like graduation or retirement. I just don’t think you have to have it all figured out when you turn thirty. You shouldn’t have it all figured out when you turn sixty-five either! I hope I’m dreaming new dreams and pursuing new passions and setting new goals until the day I die.

All of have climbed the wrong ladder leaning against the wrong wall. But that’s normal. Pursuing your passions and setting goals involves trial and error. All of us climb up some ladders we need to climb back down. I just hope we don’t climb all the way to top of the wrong ladders!

So my question is this: is your ladder leaning against the right wall?

Philippians 3:7 says, “Whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage that I may gain Christ.”

Have you ever been to a carnival where you play a game to win a prize? You try to knock down the cans or throw a ring around a bottle top or hit a balloon with a dart. But here’s the thing: the prizes are garbage. I think some of us are trying so hard to win garbage. The prize isn’t even worth the amount of money you paid to play the game!

When The Game of Life is over, all of us will realize that God is the only prize worth playing for.

God is the goal.