Goals in a Changing World

As I was reading in Corinthians this morning I began to wonder how many of us had set goals this year? Things we wanted to focus on, areas we wanted to grow in etc.

We’re now a third of the way through the year and life is looking very different to what any of us could have anticipated.

So has our goal, our focus had to shift?

Friends, Paul had a goal but it was a goal that didn’t need to change as his circumstances changed. His goal was a goal that he could aim for, not only in his day to day missionary life but even when he was shipwrecked on an island or when he was shut up in prison!

Paul knew well his imperfections but he still pushed forward day after day towards his goal…

‘Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,

I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.’

Friends, today and over the coming weeks and months, as life gradually settles down to a new normal, where will our focus be?

Will our eyes be fixed on Jesus? Will we daily be… ‘Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith?’

Ah Friends, is this how you long to go forward? Looking unto Jesus?

‘But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost,

Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.’

This word translated keep is the Greek word – tēreō – to guard by keeping the eye upon, maintain, hold fast, keep, preserve.

Friends may this be our goal going forward, to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, running, focused on the prize of eternal life, holding Jesus tight by faith, praying that God in His grace and mercy will keep and preserve us both in this way and focused on eternity rather than the here and now.

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Phil 3:13,14, Heb 12:2, Jude 1:20,21,