Are you making New Year’s resolutions and setting some personal goals for 2020?
I hope you are because it’s true—goals are the key to most success stories and focus is important. But when our goals are solely self-generated, and don’t line up with the truths revealed in God’s word, we’re stepping into dangerous territory.
Buy into the cliché, “If you can dream it – you can achieve it,” and we can unwittingly cut God out of our future. When we begin believing we can be anything we can imagine or achieve our dreams by visualizing and declaring them already true—rather than humbling coming before God to seek His will and direction for our lives–what we’re really saying is, “Who needs You?”
Those type of goals make Satan, the enemy of God giddy with delight, because his greatest goal is to separate us from God. He repackages the lie from the garden of Eden—that God is not to be trusted–by telling us we should look out for ourselves, take control of our lives, and become our own god.
As with all his lies, nothing could be farther from the truth. Personal growth, discovery of all we can be, and fulfilling the unique purpose for which we were created is God’s greatest and primary goal for our lives. He loves us. He’s on our side. He longs to fulfill the desires of our heart, and we can trust Him with our future.
As you begin planning for the New Year please, don’t listen to your heart. “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick. Who can understand it?” Jeremiah 17:9. Instead, pray, submit your plans, dreams and the desires of your heart to God. Then move forward, focused on achieving your goals, confident in knowing He will be with you every step of the way.
