What is Your Goal for Today?

Focus. In watching the Olympics one thing becomes increasingly clear: these people focus. Whether the action is a routine on the balance beam or a summersault and twist in a high dive, the competitor has learned and trained to focus whole-heartedly on the details to make the execution near flawless. While it is exciting to see someone with such effort and ability put everything on the line for the gold medal, there is something more which rivets us to the screen. In every person there is a deep-seated desire to succeed and reach our goals.

Often in the day to day reality of life we get caught up in our work, our family, our responsibilities, and even our struggles to survive as pleasantly as possible. If we make it through the day, without rocking the boat too much, we feel like it has been a good day. Unfortunately that is not why God gave us life. What is our main purpose for the day?

Most Christians have read that the purpose of life is to know and serve God. Yet this foundational principle seems so far removed from real daily existence. How do we make it an inner drive of our hearts everyday? What if God, in giving us this first and great commandment (Love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength), also intended us to ask Him for help in doing it? All the commands in Scripture are addressed to our will, in other words, we have to choose to obey them. Then God who “works in you both to will and to work for His pleasure” accomplishes it in cooperation with us. Many of us are like Peter, who promised Jesus his willingness to die for Him, but didn’t have the inner power to do it in the time of trial.

The point is, even in the area of our relationship to God, we need to ask Him to give us a heart to know and love God each morning.  Ephesians 1:17 is a prayer asking the Father for wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him.  The most precious and important goal of our life today is to know and love God , and those who invite the Holy Spirit to empower their will and heart will experience a fresh desire and joy in being closer to Him. It is as simple and yet profound as praying,  “Father God, help me to know and love you today in all I think and do.”

Jeremiah 24:7 Then I will give them a heart to know Me, that I am the Lord; and they shall be My people, and I will be their God, for they shall return to Me with their whole heart.