Equipping young women professionals with young families to find fulfillment, contentment and joy as mothers and home makers without losing sight of who they are as women.

Volume 09, Issue 04: Make God Your Goal

As we always do, we have focused these first moments of the new year on our aspirations and intentions. We have focused on the goals we want to go after in the new year, dreams we want to pursue, themes we want to live our days around. But the reality is, not every beginning of a new year is promising for all us. Sometimes some of us begin a new year desperate for a miracle, or on the verge of giving up.

I listened to something astounding several days ago and set a reminder for myself to go back to listen to it keenly at a later point. The reminder kept popping up on my screen but I didn't get to it until today.

It's about a principle found at the end of the sixth chapter of the book of Matthew. With a bit of my own emphasis here and there, I am going to relay the message the way the speaker said it, as I couldn't possibly put it across any better. I couldn't get the name of the speaker but I credit this article to him.

Many of us allow our problems to make us desperate and we manipulate God's presence. We use God as a means to get a miracle instead of using a miracle as a means to get to know God. When we do this, we are like the children of Israel who cried out to God to get them out of Egypt. In reality, they didn't really want God, they just wanted freedom. And God was a means to get that freedom.

But Moses used the exodus from Egypt as a means to know God. Because when God took too long on the mountain, the children of Israel worshiped a cow. But when God took too long on the mountain, Moses waited on God. Because to Moses, God was not a means to a goal, God was the goal.

Something happens when you make intimacy with God your number one goal. It numbs your desperation. It doesn't remove the problem, it just makes your problem not the most important thing in your life.

You may still be struggling with your finances or with pain in your body, or with stagnation, or with a form of barrenness or lack, a wilderness situation of sorts. But you understand that God is bigger than your problem. You reckon that God's presence is more important than your issue. And what God wants you to do is more important than your struggle. And when you get busy pursuing God, He begins to ask you, "What do you want?" Because intimacy with God kills your desperation.

Desperation is dangerous. Because when you are desperate for your miracle, you become impatient, and when you become impatient, you always produce Ishmael. When you are desperate for your miracle you cannot differentiate between God's supply and Satan's bait.

When you are desperate for your miracle, God is always a means to a goal. And when you get the goal, God gets left behind.

But when you are satisfied in God, in spite of your problem, God now takes interest in your problem. God takes interest in your dream. God takes interest in your desires. God begins to say to you, "Let's make your dreams come to pass." He takes interest in them because your dreams are now not coming out of a place of desperation, they are coming out of your satisfaction in the presence of God.

As we begin the new year, let's not use God as a means to get a miracle, rather pursue Him, and use our miracles as a means to know God. Let's make God our goal, because when we seek first the Kingdom of God rather than what we want, He begins to ask us what we want.

If God gives such attention to the appearance of wildflowers - most of which are never even seen - don't you think he'll attend to you, take pride in you, do his best for you? What I'm trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God's giving. People who don't know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don't worry about missing out. You'll find all your everyday human concerns will be met. Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don't get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes (Matthew 6:30-34, MSG translation).

For His Glory,

Lillian Chebosi