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Goals Are Best Made Pliable

Scriptures: Isaiah 14:27
by Jacob Abshire on March 2, 2015

Last week, I took a break from blog writing to write for some other purposes: seminary, church, books, and a tad more. It was a relief, to be honest, a good breather. But it didn’t come without setbacks.

Remember that I set a personal goal to write at least five pieces each week? (That is a total of 260 posts for the year.) The break from the blog would mean that I would set myself back at least five writings if I’m keeping with the annual goal total. So yeah, it wasn’t easy to do, but I did it. I took a week off. And yeah, it hurt … sort of.

In my series on goal setting, I mentioned our goals should be seen in light of God’s will. God has a purpose for your life that is expressed in His permissive will. He has things He wants you to do but will allow you to do things that are not divinely desirable for reasons of His own.

At the same time, God has a purpose for your life that is expressed in His providential will. This is the big picture. It entails the master plan that will not be altered by any choice you make. It is the plan that includes you but takes into account all the other intricacies of creation. There is no stopping this plan.

“For the Lord of hosts has planned, and who can frustrate it? And as for His stretched-out hand, who can turn it back?”

Isaiah 14:27

When our goals and plans conflict with His providential will, we will either fight Him in vain or alter our plans to agree. Fighting God’s plans will inevitably result in our disappointment. We will not win. Rather, we should make the adjustments to align ourselves with His design.

Remember that Christian word submit? How about this one: surrender?

Letting our goals go or change is a matter of submitting ourselves to God’s greater design. It’s not a matter of losing, per se but gaining. Would you like to achieve your goals and lose your soul? (See how I did that?)

All that to remind you of something I recently needed to remind myself: goals are best made pliable.

Speaking of which, my goal in writing this was not that. But as it goes, that’s where it ended. Funny how that works, right? I wanted to update you on my life, writing, changes, and other things that will impact my blog. Since you keep up, I thought you might want to know. We’ll get into that throughout this week.

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