Good goals are Big, Specific, Measurable and For Others. But what does Big even mean? Today I’ll be breaking this apart.
Three thoughts from Nate
Our hearts have desires. Some are fleeting like what color to paint an office, others are rich and lasting, like the desire to love and be loved. When ordered well, these desires can be described in three ways. Deep, Wide and Lofty.
1. Deep - We all long to be loved, to be known fully. Like the Prodigal son, we’ve run away and at some point looked down at the muck we’re in and said “I want to go home.” We long for the embrace with a Father who is waiting for us, who runs to us and forgives. That relationship, that embrace is deep. It is one-to-one.
2. Wide – If we’re each created in the image of God, yet we’re also unique as individuals, each person we meet is a unique image of God. The more folks we serve, the greater our opportunity to serve God. Jesus served many as he multiplied the loaves and fishes. This is wide.
3. Lofty – Similar to deep, but rather than the solitude and quiet that comes with the deep, we all have a desire to be transformed; transfixed in an encounter with the sublime. At some point, we’ve all had a mountaintop experience, where light and wonder floods in and nearly overwhelms. But you don’t get a mountaintop experience by taking a helicopter there, you have to climb. Peter’s witnessing of the transfiguration is lofty.
As you’re defining your goals, try not to use someone else’s definition of big. In western culture we’re drawn to counting things. Square footage, dollars, likes, votes, retweets etc, so big carries the connotation of being numerous. It shouldn’t. Big should be big for you, where you need to focus right now. It can be deep, wide or lofty, but it needs to be one in order to force you to focus your effort on it.
Example goals
Deep
I need to repair my relationship with my spouse. I commit to one quiet act of service to her every day for the next 90 days.
I would like to read the Bible more. I commit to a detailed study of no more than one chapter a day of the Gospel according to John, reading and studying with a program.
Wide –
The business needs customers in order to be profitable. I commit to increasing my audience by 10x in the next 90 days.
I would like to read the Bible more. I commit to reading the New Testament in 90 days which is 3 chapters a day.
Lofty –
I would like to be in better cardio health because my family has a history of high blood pressure. I would also like to push myself to do something I’ve never done before. I commit to running a marathon on X date, within 90 days, with my friend (_____). To achieve this, I will find a running plan online and schedule out my long runs for each week.
I would like to read the Bible more. I commit to 90 days of fasting from media and a new practice of a holy hour. To celebrate, I will hold a feast with my family and friends at the end.
With all this technical language, it’s easy to get overwhelmed with the idea that a goal needs to be perfected before we start working on it. That is incorrect. Goals and goal setting tactics are just tools that we can use to help focus our efforts. They often go along with a transformation of our life toward the good, but we do not do this alone. When Christ calls Matthew to follow him, the word used in Greek is the same one to describe the resurrection from the dead.
Christ has called each of us to follow Him and He’s given us the grace to be able to do so. We just need to rise up and move.
Not move perfectly, just move.
A Long Quote from a Book
From “Where God Happens : Discovering Christ in One Another” by Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury pg 24
“To assume the right to judge, or to assume that you have arrived at a settled spiritual maturity that entitles you to prescribe confidently at a distance for another’s sickness, is in fact to leave others without the therapy they need for their souls; it is to cut them off from God, to leave them in their spiritual slavery – while reinforcing your own slavery. Neither you nor they have access to life – as in the words of Jesus, you have shut up heaven for others and for yourself. But the plain acknowledgement of your solidarity in need and failure opens a door: it shows that it is possible to live in the truth and to go forward in hope. It is in such a moment that God gives himself through you, and you become by God’s gift a means of connecting another with God. You have done the job you were created to do.
Saint Anthony of the Desert says that gaining the brother or sister and winning God are linked. It is not getting them signed up to something or getting them on your side. It is opening doors for them to healing and to wholeness. Insofar as you open such doors for another, you gain God, in the sense that you become a place where God happens for somebody else. You become a place where God happens. God comes to life for somebody else in a life-giving way, not because you are good or wonderful, but because that is what God has done. So, if we can shift our preoccupations, anxiety, and selfishness out of the way to put someone in touch with the possibility of God’s healing, to the extent we are ourselves in touch with God’s healing. So if you gain your brother or sister, you gain God.
Until soon,
Nate