Upper Path Valley Presbyterian Church

2 Peter 1:3-11 June 3, 2007

“The Power of the Right Goal”
Rev. Meagan Boozer

When I graduated from high school, my goal was to attend Salem College and graduate with a piano performance degree. After one year, I left Salem, worked for several years, and set a new goal of attending Penn State University. My career goal had changed: I wanted to become a music teacher at the high school level. I did graduate from Penn State with my music ed degree, but I never achieved my goal of becoming a music teacher in a high school.

Goals are important things. I remember a youth pastor repeating this phrase over and over again: If you shoot at nothing, you’ll hit it every time.

It’s important we know what direction we’re heading. Former President Ronald Reagan said, “My philosophy of life is that if we make up our mind what we are going to make of our lives, then work hard toward that goal, we never lose - somehow we win out.”

I like the fact that he put the word ‘somehow,’ in there. He leaves room for all the variables that come to us in our lives. And there are many. Just when you think you’ve got a certain pathway figured out, something happens that “puts a wrench” in the works and causes you to have to come up with a different plan. That’s life. The longer we live, the more we realize that the only thing we can be sure of is that things are going to keep changing. And so we need to be ready for the changes when they come; we need to be ready to handle them with strength, faith, and yes, even with a sense of anticipation in what God is doing for us.

Last Sunday in my Sunday school class, Neil Anderson the teacher of the video series we’ve been studying, brought up a point of instruction that I thought was so important for all of us that I felt compelled to share it here (and especially with our graduates) in worship today. This teaching helps us know how to be ready for the changes that come in our lives in a wonderfully simple way. Here’s what Dr. Anderson teaches:

Let’s say you have a goal to receive additional training after you graduate. You need a particular type of training in order to do a particular job – whether that training is through college or graduate school, through the military, through vocational classes, or on-the-job training. This is your goal. But what if you don’t have the grades to do it, you don’t have the money to do it, you don’t have the time or geographical location to do it, you aren’t given the opportunity to do it because you weren’t accepted to the program, etc., etc., etc. Do you follow me here? What’s going to happen to you?
Dr. Anderson says you’re probably going to get mad, frustrated, and/or depressed.

I think about the college graduate who has just gotten a degree in business management who is out there looking for a job. He/she interviews and interviews and interviews but just can’t seem the land the job because he/she doesn’t have any experience. Well, how can you get experience if no one will hire you? You can get mad, frustrated, and depressed all at the same time in a situation like this!

John and I have a young friend who spent some time in prison for D.U.I. He is a great, intelligent young man who made some terrible choices. He graduated from William & Mary University in Williamsburg 2-3 years ago. Usually if you have a degree from William & Mary you have a job before you graduate. Our young friend is still trying to get a job because employers don’t want to take a chance on a convicted felon – even though he has cleaned up his life. He’s trying hard not to get mad, frustrated, and depressed. But it is incredibly difficult.

Dr. Anderson suggests that we change the way we think about goals. He suggests that as Christians, we should have ONE thing that we commit to as our LIFE GOAL – and call all the other things we want DESIRES.

Getting a job, going to college, getting training of some sort, getting married, buying a house, having a peaceful household, getting a promotion, finding a productive place of service in retirement, winning the district championship in baseball – all these things can be called, (and he is suggesting should be called) desires, not goals. He says, that according to Scripture we should have only ONE GOAL that cannot be blocked by anyone but ourselves. Let’s take a look now at 2 Peter 1:3-11:
“Everything that goes into a life of pleasing God has been miraculously given to us by getting to know, personally and intimately, the One who invited us to God. The best invitation we ever received!

So don’t lose a minute in building on what you’ve been given, complementing your basic faith with good character, spiritual understanding, alert discipline, passionate patience, reverent wonder, warm friendliness, and generous love, each dimension fitting into and developing the others. With these qualities active and growing in your lives, no grass will grow under your feet, no day will pass without its reward as you mature in your experience of our Master Jesus. Without these qualities you can’t see what’s right before you, oblivious that your old sinful life has been wiped off the books.

So, friends, confirm God’s invitation to you, his choice of you. Don’t put it off; do it now. Do this, and you’ll have your life on a firm footing, the streets paved and the way wide open into the eternal kingdom of our Master and Savior, Jesus Christ.”

So, here’s the deal: If you make as your goal that you want to please God by becoming the person God made you to be, and you put everything you have into fulfilling that goal, then nothing and no one can and will block that goal in your life.

However, if you make as your goal becoming a music teacher in a high school, who or what can block that goal? All sorts of things can block that goal. I’m living proof of that! It’s not that becoming a music teacher was a bad goal for me, it just wasn’t God’s best plan for my life. God had a plan for my life, and when God has a plan, which he has for all of us, nothing can stop it. Nothing. (I could have saved myself quite of bit of energy and disappointment had I understood that better at the time.)

Listen, because of what Jesus died to give us (freedom from being slaves to our sin), because of the power of the Holy Spirit inside of us, dispensing God’s truth to our hearts on a continual basis, because of these realities for us as Christians, there is nothing to hold us back from becoming the people God created us to be.

Let me repeat the words from 2 Peter, “Don’t lose a minute in building on what you’ve been given, complementing your basic faith with good character, spiritual understanding, alert discipline, passionate patience, reverent wonder, warm friendliness, and generous love, each dimension fitting into and developing the others. With these qualities active and growing in your lives, no grass will grow under your feet, no day will pass without its reward as you mature in your experience of our Master Jesus. Without these qualities you can’t see what’s right before you.”

"Disappointments - His appointment,"
Change one letter, then I see
That the thwarting of my purpose
Is God's better choice for me.
His appointment must be blessing,
Tho' it may come in disguise,
For the end from the beginning
Open to His wisdom lies.

"Disappointments - His appointment,"
No good will He withhold,
From the denials oft we gather
Treasures of His love untold.
Well He knows each broken purpose
Leads to fuller, deeper trust,
And the end of all His dealings
Proves our God is wise and just.

"Disappointments - His appointment,"
Lord, I take it, then, as such,
Like clay in the hands of a potter,
Yielding wholly to Thy touch.
My life's plan is Thy molding;
Not one single choice be mine;
Let me answer, unrepining -
"Father, not my will, but Thine."

May all of us, and especially each of our graduates, take all of our desires and funnel them into but one goal: To become more like Jesus. That way, no matter what course our lives may take, we can live at peace in the center of the will of God. Amen.

Upper Path Valley Presbyterian Church

06-03-07