God has goals for you to achieve in 2011. God has goals for our church family to achieve in 2011. Most New Year’s resolutions are forgotten by the time that February rolls around. Why are they forgotten? There could be a number of reasons.
First of all, the resolution may not be from God and God won’t help you do your own thing. Secondly, usually, a resolution or goal for that matter is hard to carry out and people get discouraged. Finally, in the hustle and bustle of life, people just forget about their resolutions or goals. In order to achieve the goals the God has for you this year, you need to understand some things about your world that are not obvious at first glance.
Today, I want to talk about “Understanding Your World.” Our natural tendency is to view our world, the world in which we are going go achieve godly goals, simply by what we can see with our physical eyes. The Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, reveals that there is another sphere that interacts with each one of us, which is the spiritual world.
Colossians 3:2 (NIV) Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.
God’s word tells us to set our minds on things above, on spiritual reality, because we tend to keep our minds focused solely on the earthly things we see around us. Setting our minds on spiritual things is not just something to do on Sunday mornings, but every day of the week, if we want to achieve godly goals.
Now what is present in the spiritual world that we can’t see with our eyes? We would agree that God is present, heaven is present and the Bible tells us that angels are present. But that’s not all there is. The Bible tells us that there is a warfare going on in the spiritual realm that affects each one of us.
Ephesians 6:12 (NIV) For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
When you set out to achieve godly goals in 2011, you will be entering into spiritual warfare with spiritual forces of evil that will try to stop you from achieving those goals. You’ll notice that our background for this series is a chessboard. There are two opposing armies on a chess board, the white pieces led by their king and the black pieces led by their king. Those two opposing chess armies illustrate the two kingdoms at war in the spiritual world, the kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness.
To achieve your godly goals in this year, you will need to align yourself with the kingdom of God and do battle with the kingdom of darkness. Today’s message will help you understand how to do that. Future messages in the series will help you make sure you have discerned God’s goals for you correctly.
Listen to or watch my January 9, 2011 message Understanding Your World.