Goals or God - who comes first?

You are caught in the middle. On the one side is some plan or goal you set (perhaps a New Year's resolution or a 2019 goal). On the other side of you is the accomplishment of your goal.

Focus and Effort

In order to overcome all of the obstacles that would keep you from doing what you set out to do, you are exerting a tremendous amount of effort and focus to accomplish your goal. In the midst of all of this effort, how do you interact with God? Does your focus and effort ever make you feel like you have shifted your focus away from God?My internal experience is that the focus that it takes to accomplish any significant goal can leave me wondering how my relationship with God plays in to the accomplishment of my goal. If you have gone through the Kingdomtivity process of goal-setting, then you have clearly defined God's role, others' roles, and your own role. You are not waiting for God to act on the things that you know you are supposed to do. You are already doing them.

Teaming with God

But what does teamwork look like as God does his part, others do their part, and you do your part?On any team, even after you have clearly established roles, you still relate to one another. Countless apps have been created to help teams work together when doing a project, from "Wrike", to Google Docs, to Microsoft Office. These apps are trying to help people communicate when they are working together. So what does communication with God look like when we are trying to accomplish a goal that we know He was a part of creating and also has a part in executing?We will be looking at our faith in the context of goal execution in the next few blog posts, but I wanted to start out with helping you overcome one of the biggest stumbling blocks that people encounter when accomplishing their goals.It is one of the most obvious principles, but it is one of the most challenging to execute. Here it is:No matter how much focus and effort and energy it takes to accomplish your goal, put God before your goal. Goals are an amazing gift from God, and one of the greatest thrills he has given us in life is the joy of pursuing and accomplishing our goals. But we cannot let the joy of completing the goal be greater than the joy we have in relating to Him.Abraham's near sacrifice of his son was a moment when God wanted to test His commitment to God over his goal. Abraham passed the test, and the result was a reaffirmation of the importance of his goal. Moses was given the opportunity to accomplish his goal (go to the promised land) without the presence of God. He chose God's presence.Here are three indicators that will help you know if you have put your goal above God:

1. You sacrifice your time with God to accomplish your goal - This is probably the number one litmus test as to whether you are putting your goal before God. Perhaps you created a metric around your time with God (as I suggest in this post). When your goal causes you to neglect that time for several days in a row, you know that you are choosing your goal over God. Restore the equilibrium, start with your time with him, and trust that the task he gave you isn't bigger than the left over hours in the day.
2. Focusing on your goal causes you to forsake key relationships for extended periods of time - There are moments when accomplishing a goal will cause the kind of effort that pulls you away from key relationships. One friend of mine labeled these the "playoffs". Football players who are trying to win the Superbowl only go to the playoffs once per year. If you live your life like you are always in the playoffs, neglecting key relationships around you, you know that you have put your goal before God.
3. Focusing on your goal has caused you to become obsessive to the point that you stop listening- I am focused. I wake up thinking about my goals, and I go to sleep thinking about them. I have found that my goals have gone too far, though, when I can't listen to the people around me. It's a sure indicator that your goals have taken too high a place of importance when you don't listen to others.

Look for these three indicators to make sure that you don't put your goals over God. The result will be success. Success always looks like having your relationships lined up. Trust God that if he gave you the goals then he will help you balance your focus on Him, your focus on others, and the execution of your goals.How do you know when your goals have become too important?