Red Light Green Light: Week 4

I hope you are as excited as I am for 2023 especially for everything we are going to do and see God do as a church this year. We spent all of December setting goals for the year. We talked about what we are going to stop and start. We wrote them down and we talked about why we want to set the goals, it was great.

Hopefully you took it seriously. You wrote down those goals and I bet you had every intention of breaking those bad habits and starting some good ones. Well it’s been a few weeks.

Did you stick to it? Did you stay away from that bad habit that you were so determined to change? Or did you fall back into it? Have you kept up that new habit over the last few weeks or did you lose momentum over the Holidays? Did you know that according to Scranton University only 8% of people who set goals actually achieve them? Assuming that’s true across the board, that means only 8% of us have made progress towards those goals. That’s not ideal.

I am not saying this to shame you or make you feel bad because I get it. For most of my life I have done the same thing you did. I set a goal, got really excited about it, did well for about three days and as soon as the excitement faded, I would start to lose track of the goal. I can think of several unfinished projects or dreams just talking about this right now. We all do it.

I believe the reason we all do it is because we don’t get serious enough about our goals to make a plan to accomplish the goal. How many of you have heard the quote “When you fail to plan you plan to fail.”

Well as much as I don’t like it this is true. Sure you can count on luck and skill and motivation to get through life for a while but eventually your lack of planning will catch up with you. If we don’t make a good plan and set good goals we will continue to end up back where we started. Feeling frustrated and foolish.

Think about it this way. Maybe you spend days studying before a test. You took notes in class, you organized your notes by section and you have poured over them for days to get ready. Youwalk into that test feeling prepared and ready to go. Or maybe you don’t even think about the test until you're sitting at the desk getting the test handed to you. Now that might work for a while. You might get lucky or you might be able to count on your good testing skills. But eventually you are going to come across a class where you can’t just pass without trying. What do you do then? You will be unprepared to succeed.

You failed to plan and now you are gonna fail. It’s like that with tests and school and it’s like that in honestly every area of our lives. The Bible even teaches that we need to set goals and make plans.

“Good planning and hard work lead to prosperity, but hasty shortcuts lead to poverty.”
Proverbs 21:5

Clearly we need to start setting some good goals. Luckily we picked the perfect time to do so. It’s a brand new year.We have already talked for the last month about some goals to set but, now it’s time to actually do it. To start we need to look at some wisdom from the Bible when it comes to our goals.

Our goals should be for God’s glory.

1 Corinthians 10:31 says,
“So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.”

As Christians we are part of something much bigger than ourselves. That is the kingdom of God. So when we make plans and set goals we are not just making plans to benefit us but we need to set goals that will point people to see how good our God is. Our plans should always reflect that. Not only should our plans be for God’s glory but:

Our plans should be for the benefit of others

Philippians 2:3-4 says,
“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.”

It’s easy to focus our whole lives on ourselves. If we’re not careful we’ll get caught up in that here. We’ll set goals that are entirely for our good and not take one second to think about the needs of others.

When we make our plans let’s think of how we can benefit others in everything we do. Instead saying “I want to make the team so I’m going to be better than everyone else.” What if we said “I want to make it on the football team and I’m gonna practice with the other people who are trying out. So we all have a better chance.”

Do you see how the first one is much more selfish? What about instead of “I want to get good grades so I can get a good job and make a lot of money” you say “I want to get good grades and get into a good school so I can succeed in my career and use that money to bless other
people.” Remember as Christians we don’t just live for ourselves. Our ultimate goal is to push people towards the love of Jesus and what better way to do that than by being selfless all the time.Another important reminder from scripture is

We need to pray over our goals.

Because we don’t live for ourselves we also don’t make our plans on our own. We don’t just set goals we want and make them happen. We talk to God. We ask Him what kind of goals He would have us set for ourselves and for others and then we ask Him to show us how to
accomplish them.

Proverbs 16:3 says,
“Commit to the Lord whatever you do,and he will establish your plans.”

When we commit our plans to the Lord and ask Him to guide us as we set every goal and make every decision, He will take care of the rest. If I make a plan on my own it’s on me to make it happen. And I can’t handle that kind of pressure. On the other hand, when we go to God and ask Him to give us goals and dreams for our future, then He will take care of the results. All we have to worry about is obeying Him and doing what He asks of us. That’s a lot easier than trying to make everything work out the way we want it to.

Ok so we know we need to set goals for ourselves and have heard what the Bible has to say about it. Now I want to give you some practical advice for your goals. If we want to stop failing every time we set a goal we need to make a change.We need to set SMART goals. Someone much smarter than me came up with this acronym and it is super helpful when it comes to setting goals. It creates almost a guideline of what a good goal is. Let’s break it down.

S. Specific

Too many of us are setting big broad goals and when it comes to actually achieving them, we don’t know where to start because it’s too broad. A broad goal is something like “I want to be kinder to people.” That’s a great goal to set but it’s really hard to track if you are doing it well because “people” is too broad of a statement. A more specific goal would be “I want to be kinder to the students I pass in the hall” Now that is a little bit more specific but it’s still not a great goal because it also needs to be:

M. Measurable

Your goal needs to be something that you can actually track. If you just say “I want to be kinder to the students I pass in the hall” there is no real way to measure that. But if you say “I want to be kinder to every single student that I pass in the hall.” That is a little better because you can measure it. You can think about the students you talked to and evaluate if you were mean to them. That way you are measuring the success of your goal. Now it’s measurable but I will be honest, I don’t know if it’s:

A. Achievable

Your goal needs to be something that you can actually do. So I have a question. Do you talk to every single person that you pass by on the way to class? Most of us would say, no. Because you don’t have time for that. Also that’d be weird. You are rushing to class. So being kind to every single person you pass in the hall may be kinda hard. But you can set a goal like this: “I will be kinder to every person that I talk to in the hall.” That’s specific, measurable and
achievable. Now your goal also needs to be:

R. Relevant

Your goal needs to actually have something to do with your life. Like being kinder to the people at school. If you want to succeed it needs to actually make sense with your life. And:

T. Timed

It is way easier to measure and accomplish our goals if we have a timer on them. If I say “I want to be kinder to every student I talk to in the hall.” without adding a time it is really easy to get overwhelmed and not follow through. Because now I have to wrap my brain around being kind every day for the rest of my life. That'd be great but it’s really overwhelming to think about. But if you set a time like “I want to be kinder to every student I talk to in the hall for the rest of the month.” Then you will be able to measure your progress and see how well you did in the time you gave yourself. Instead of just putting it off because you don’t have a timeline.

So we know we need to start making some plans and now we know how. But the question is what? What kind of goals do we want to set? Well that’s up to you. Here is your challenge. I want you to go home this week and set two specific goals. Just like a few weeks ago I want you to pick one thing that you want to start. And one thing you want to stop.

These goals need to be SMART. Specific, measurable, achievable, relatable and timed. On a piece of paper, I want you to write your goal using this method. I want you to write S.M.A.R.T. going down alongside your paper. Next to each letter, follow what is above. Do this for all your goals moving forward and pray over it every time.