Adjusting Our Goals

      By Fern Horst

"Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." (Matthew 6:19-21)

We are now two weeks into the New Year. It's about the time that many realize that their New Year's resolutions and goals were too broad or too ambitious or too something else that will make them impossible to accomplish. There are many resources to give us help in knowing how to make reasonable goals that can be accomplished, and how to break them down into mini goals to make the final goal more feasible.

But here in Matthew Jesus gives us another criteria — the most important criteria — in setting goals for our lives. When we scrutinize our goals, can we say that they are for the purpose of laying up treasures in heaven? Or do they primarily accomplish the acquisition of treasures that will just be for the benefit of our lives here on this earth, where the normal process of decay will eventually destroy them, or that thieves could take away from us?

Even the most noblest of goals can be for the personal purpose of laying up earthly treasure, depending on the intents of our hearts. A person can desire to be a pastor or a missionary, and yet the purpose of their heart is to build glory and prestige for themselves. Many desire to marry so that their needs and desires are met, rather than for the purpose of serving their spouse and children.

On the other hand, personal goals to lay up treasure in heaven are often disguised by goals that seem at first glance to be self-serving. There are those who don business suits and ties and make salaries the rest of us only dream about, but who see their jobs as unique mission fields and manage to communicate God's love to those around them and draw them to Christ. Others appear to have it made with the proverbial picket fence yard and house, an attractive spouse, and the cutest children around. But their days are spent praying and preparing those children to know what it means to take up their cross and follow Jesus.

So as we take a second look at our goals this third week into the new year, it's not so much the goals themselves that may need to be adjusted as much as our heart's purpose behind them. Is our goal through those goals to lay up treasures for ourselves on this earth, or to lay up treasures in heaven?

James said that, "Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts" (James 4:3). If our purposes fit in with God's eternal purposes, we can be sure we will have His help to accomplish them. If they don't, we may find ourselves at the end of this year limping along on our own, disillusioned and worn out.

The accomplishment of fulfilling a goal that builds earthly treasure has a hollow sense of victory. But when our time is spent building heavenly treasure — even though we won't be able to see the actual "ledger" until we step over into our eternal home — there is a fulfillment that is literally out of this world.

© 2002 Fern Horst

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