Bloggity bloggity blog, Part III: Goals and Values
September 10, 2015
In our discussion of Impactful Events, which cause us to encounter and develop spiritual principles, we need to see that God is working on creating in us core values that will shape our life’s goals. And this is a pretty important concept. It is easy to mix up goals and values, and when we do we are often confused, feel isolated, want to quit, etc…
For example (since this is supposed to be a blog on spirituality) in a church context we may find we have the same goals as others–this could be you have a heart for the lost, so do they, you want to worship in a modern cultural style, so do they, you value the manifest presence of God, so do they…but for some reason you just don’t seem to fit. Or for many years you fit perfectly, but now something has changed, and it just feels like you don’t fit any more. Moments like this can be very confusing, and we often get into a big internal battle with our mind trying to convince our heart, “This place is perfect for you!” “What’s wrong with you, get over it!” But the heart is just not that easy to convince. The reason being is that our core values, which are shaped by spiritual principles, given by an impactful event by God, do not budge. God may add to our values over our lifetime, but I don’t think that they change very much. However goals can change like a hairstyle, if one way isn’t working to save the lost, we will find another way. If one style of music isn’t connecting, we can pick a different one. Values, what motivates us are rock solid in our Spirit, but our goals can change depending on the needs of the community, our finances, health, etc… Our values are why we want to do things; our goals are the outworking of our values. Why is this important? Because as western Christians we have it in our heads that the successful completion of a task is the important thing- to save the lost, grow the church, teach the people etc…which are great goals. But in our internal wiring how we are working toward those goals will be very different from person to person depending on our personal impactful event with Christ, the spiritual principle instilled, and our internal wiring, ie. Personality type.
For example I was just visiting a home group with about 25 people in it. The manifest presence of God was very tangible in worship, but I could tell about 5 people were feeling really left out. And as this group took turns to pray for one person after another, sitting them down in the middle of the room, these five people didn’t move. It was very uncomfortable for them. What was going on? Partially personality type, some were extroverts, and the five in question, possibly introverts. But there was more then that. If I was to interview those five (which I didn’t do but have in other situations) I would probably have discovered they all loved the manifest presence of God, they all loved God touching people, thus why they were in the meeting—the value of being in the presence of God was mutual. However these people (or people like them) had really met the Lord intimately in personal times alone with Him, maybe walking in the woods, or in the back of the church during worship, etc…the high value for them was being honest with God heart to heart alone, not sitting on a chair in the middle of the room with a bunch of people to pray for—or praying for them. For these five it was nerve rattling, uncomfortable, and it made them want to hide out in the back of the room, and just put on a smile so it all looked good. To take something so intimate with God and place it in the middle of the room, or to come up with a word from God just because now was the time scheduled to do it—just seemed off. Because their impactful event with God didn’t come that way—it came just them and God, it had built a spiritual principle of “God meets me in His presence in the quietness of my heart.” And that had become a core value…so much so to just jump in and prophecy on queue now seemed contrived.
Now on the other hand this other group of people had really experienced an impactful event at some point during public ministry time at a church where the laying on of hands in public happened—they had a high value on body ministry, and believed “when we pray for people God will change them,” and because of that high value they had made that moment of everyone laying hands on one person at a time a group goal. Nothing wrong with that at all, in fact it is highly commendable to take all that time to pray for one person, it’s just that these five people had not had the same impactful event, didn’t share that spiritual principle, thus didn’t have the same core value. And thus their goal, what they would like to see happen in a meeting, was not to pray for people while everyone was gathered around—it was to meet God quietly in the corner—or one on one in intimate discussion. The goal to have everyone pray for one person at a time while everyone else watched made them feel out of place, lost, etc…
Let’s look at these two groups of people again. They have some common values, the manifest presence of God, being in fellowship, seeing God touch people with His love, hearing God speak, etc. But because of all the common values, the application of a common goal is assumed—“we now need to put everyone on a chair and have everyone gather around them every week and prophecy.” That outworking of the values works for 20 people in that room. But for the other five, sitting in a small group, sharing about what is going on in life over coffee, being relational, listening to people’s life story may be a far better outworking of their values. Each style backs up the shared values, but there can be two different ways to go about it based on what is important to each group—and the two different ways are the outworking of the goals based on the values.
Do we see such a clash between goals and values in scripture? Absolutely. Jacob was working for Laban because he loved Rachael, in Laban’s eyes Jacob was working for Him so that God would bless Him (Gen 30:27). Both had the goal to work hard—but were motivated by different values.
Jesus had the same problem in John 6:26-27
“I tell you the truth, you are looking for me, not because you saw miraculous signs but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. “
To the people Jesus provided a meal, to Jesus providing the meal was about a spiritual principle. Jesus was trying to instill a core value.
“Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. On him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.”
One more comes to mind, in Acts 15:38-40 Paul and Barnabas’ have an argument over Mark. Mark had abandoned Paul and Barnabas on a previous trip. Barnabas obviously still believed in Mark and wanted to take him along again, Paul didn’t.
Barnabas wanted to take John, also called Mark, with them, but Paul did not think it wise to take him, because he had deserted them in Pamphylia and had not continued with them in the work.
They had such a sharp disagreement that they parted company. Barnabas took Mark and sailed for Cyprus, but Paul chose Silas and left, commended by the brothers to the grace of the Lord.
What could this argument been based on? Both Paul and Barnabas had the same goals…but I think there was a different set of values. Barnabas (whose name means “son of encouragement”) seemed to believe in people when others didn’t. In fact when everyone was scared to death of Paul (still named Saul at that time) Barnabas was the one to search and find Paul and bring him to the Apostles—Barnabas believed Paul to be worth risking his reputation over, he could see the treasure in him (Acts 9:26-28). And it appears Barnabas is once again doing the same thing again with Mark. He is willing to risk his reputation over Mark, because he sees the treasure. Paul on the other hand is task focused, and has a point, Mark did abandon them. Both Paul and Barnabas had the same goal—world evangelism, but Barnabas had a core value he wasn’t going to cheat to see that goal achieve. Here is Barnabas’ core value “people deserve a second chance,” and he believed it so much he was willing to leave his co-evangelist and risk on Mark’s behalf. And in the end Barnabas was right. We discover that many years later when Paul was in jail, the person he requested to be sent to him and help him was none other than John Mark (2 Timothy 4:11).
Why is this discussion on values and goals important? Because there are things in you that you highly value, and God put them there. That could be music, evangelism, studying scripture, counseling, friendship, hearing God’s voice, etc. And often, because of what other people value, we let what is important to us die. That is not the heart of God. Yes there are seasons in life where we need to put other’s needs in front of our own. But God did not put longings in your heart, to let them die. Or to be just around groups of people where you just don’t feel you fit. For example I often find that a person can be called to one church to minister in, but need to go somewhere else to get life and be personally refreshed. This may be a couple where the husband is really into getting life from the good hermeneutical study of scripture …but the wife is spiritually sensitive and needs to be in a place the manifest presence of God is. Both want to be with God and grow—in that they have a common goal, but there are different needs that both need to be met, and those internal needs will have come from something God himself seeded.
So here is your mission, if you choose to accept it. Take a look at your list of four impactful events, and the spiritual principles learned from them (teaching from the previous August blogs). What core values have emerged in your life from them?
For example, for me, hearing God’s voice at YWAM was an impactful event, the spiritual principle God put in me from that event was “God speaks today and is a good Father.” My core value from all of this is if I can teach people to hear God’s voice they too will meet this good Father—and that has created my goal of developing Samuel’s Mantle.
The other impactful event I shared on an earlier blog was playing soccer with the “losers.” And we won. That impactful event put in me a spiritual principle “God loves the broken.” The core value I began to walk in is “I will see people how God sees them, and call out that treasure.” And that core value now influences how I see people and prophecy over them. (In fact this will be a great discussion about goals actually, when I pastored I applied this value so differently then I do now, the goal then was small groups and discipleship for street kids—now my goal in SAM is different but that value is still there functioning, because goals can change, but values don’t very much)
Try to lay it all out on a sheet of paper like this:
Impactful event Spiritual Principle Core-value Goal (how you apply
the principle)
————————————————————————————————-
Hearing God at God speaks today I want people to Samuel’s Mantle
YWAM and is a good Father meet this loving
Father
————————————————————————————————–
Loser game God loves the To see people as Giving people room
Loser God sees them to fail
Once again, if you are pondering this and you are stuck, try working in the reverse: do you have a goal in life others don’t? What core-value do you have that is motivating that goal? Is there a spiritual principle behind that goal that you believe? And how did you come to believe that? What happened to you that you discovered that principle?
As we begin to take apart our life’s journeys as I am describing above we are beginning to work with the Lord as He develops us over a lifetime: introducing new impactful events, creating new spiritual principles in us, shaping our core values and goals – possibly adding new layers over and over for all eternity. It is a great journey to walk with Jesus as we discover the investment heaven itself has put into us. Take time to ponder your journey—you are sure to discover Jesus has been on your road of life–walking with you the whole time.