85 Sermon Illustrations on Goals

Since studies tell us that only three percent of people have a complete goals program, what better time than now, the start of a new year, and a new century, to review goal setting?

We think that more than three percent of our readers have a complete goals program, simply because of the type of people you are. However, even if most of our readers have a complete goals program, we’d like to boost that percentage closer to 100 percent. We know from experience that a written goals program makes a huge difference in life. So we encourage you to follow these steps from the Personal Development module of Training Ziggets.

1. Put your goals in writing. Ask yourself: What do I want to be, do and have? Write your answers on a sheet of paper or in a journal. Come on now, work with us, do it right now!

2. List the benefits of achieving these goals. Answer the question: What’s in it for me? You say you want to lose 20 pounds? What are the benefits of dropping that weight? You say you want to buy a new house? What are the benefits of doing so? You say you want to get closer to your spouse? What are the benefits of a better relationship? Record these benefits on paper. Write down as many of them as you can. Think about them. Try to experience them.

3. Next step, think about the obstacles or challenges that stand between you and your goal. You say you want to improve your spiritual life. What’s keeping you from doing so? Perhaps you don’t know other spiritual people and it would help to meet them. Perhaps you don’t belong to a Bible study, but it would help if you did. Perhaps you could benefit by reading numerous books of a spiritual nature. Think of what’s in your way and then think about how to remove that obstacle.

4. What skills or knowledge will you need to reach each goal? You want to master e-commerce so you can earn more money in your business? What will you need to know? Where can you get this information? Can you sign up for a college course? Can you gain enough knowledge by reading about this subject, or attending seminars? Identify the skills and knowledge you’ll need, and then find solutions to what you need.

5. Who can help you achieve your goals? There are individuals as well as groups, companies and organizations that may help you reach your goal. Do you need a tutor? A coach? Is there a support group that can help you? Ask around. Look around. These resources are available.

6. Develop a plan of action to reach your goals. It’s well and good to think about the future, but until you actually create a fulfillment plan, you probably won’t realize your goals. How are you going to get there? By now, you have some of those answers. When will you arrive at this goal? How long will it take? Keep in mind that some goals require more than a few days or even months to complete. You will have short-term as well as long-term goals. All the same, you must develop action plans to reach these goals.

7. Set the dates for reaching your goals. If you say, “Some day I’m going to buy a new car,” there’s a good chance “some day” will always be another day, and not ever today. “Some day” just doesn’t arrive. So set dates for achieving your goals. That way, you can build your action plan around these dates. You can watch your progress. You can pick up speed whenever necessary. Keep those dates in mind and your mind is more likely to focus on helping you move towards your goals.

Are you still with us? If so, please take time now to write your goals program. If you’ve already done so, congratulations. You’re among the small percentage of people who will surely realize your dreams and get ahead in life.

“Goals. There’s no telling what you can do when you get inspired by them. There’s no telling what you can do when you believe in them. And there’s no telling what will happen when you act upon them.” — Jim Rohn

“If you want to reach a goal, you must ‘see the reaching’ in your own mind before you actually arrive at your goal.” — Zig Ziglar

“An unwritten want is a wish, a dream, a never-happen. The day you put your goal in writing is the day it becomes a commitment that will change your life. Are you ready?” — Tom Hopkins

“Goal-setting illuminates the road to success just as runway lights illuminate the landing field for an incoming aircraft.” — Nido Qubein

“The establishment of a clear central purpose or goal in life is the starting point of all success.” — Brian Tracy

“In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, they had better aim at something high.” — Henry David Thoreau, American Essayist & Poet

Questions to Ponder

• What do my past results teach me about my aim in the past?

• What am I aiming at now?

• What would I see if I raised my aim?

When you woke up this morning, were your thoughts on what you've “got to do” or what you “get to do”?

If your thoughts were on what you've “got to do,” they can be either negative or positive. For example, if you've “got to go to work,” that's positive because it means you have a job and are gainfully employed. Not only that, you have a means of getting to your place of employment and you have the health and energy to do exactly that. So your “got to” is translated into positive steps toward performing what you “get to do” because at the end of the work period you “get to” cash your paycheck. Then you “get to” use that money to pay bills. Some of it will go to buy food, clothing and shelter and, ideally, a part of it will go to your church or favorite charity as well as to your retirement plan.

By and large, however, when we think of “got to,” we think of something that we are required to do whether we want to do it or not. For example, we've “got to” make those car and house payments; we've “got to” be on time or risk losing our job; we've “got to” perform satisfactorily or be dismissed; we've “got to” get home at a certain time to prepare the evening meal for our family; we've “got to” make those phone calls we've been neglecting; we've “got to” visit an elderly relative who is in a nursing home or hospital; we've “got to ... got to ... got to....”

If we concentrate on the particular line of thought of what we've “got to” do, we're probably going to have a stressful day and end it by being tired and perhaps even a little “out of sorts.”

I love the “get to” approach that Lesleigh Ann Schaefer describes. She shares with her Internet readers how at age 44 she went back to college and is now headed for graduation. She made a list of her “get to's,” which will give all of us something to think about:

-- I get to go to school to fulfill my dream.

-- I get to go to work when so many people can't.

-- I get to do the laundry, thankful for a washer and dryer.

-- I get to play with my cat who is so thankful for the attention.

-- I get to say a prayer; I have freedom of speech.

-- I get to remember the things that make me happy.

-- I get to spend time with a friend who needs my help.

-- I get to read a book; I still have my sight.

Lesleigh Ann's is a spirit and attitude that contributes not only to her physical and financial well-being but also to her emotional and social well-being.

Suggestions: Take out your pen and paper and begin to make a list, eliminating your “got to's” and concentrating entirely on your “get to's.” “I get to visit my mother in the nursing home,” “I get to make a phone call to cheer up a friend who is confined to her home,” “I get to write that thank you note to someone who sent me a nice remembrance on Valentine's Day,” “I get to read that book I've been wanting to read on how to get a raise,” “I get to clean out my garage and make it more attractive in case unexpected opportunities to sell my home develop, so that I can reduce my costs of living and get to enjoy life more.”

Let your imagination run full bore. List all of the things you are grateful you get to do. It is amazing how much more excitement will be generated when you concentrate on the “get to's” of life.

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If you’ve listened to motivational speakers or read any self-help books, you’ve undoubtedly been told about the importance of setting goals. In fact, many people will tell you that goals are the key to success. Well, I’ve studied goal setting for nearly 20 years and I have a confession to make: I still don’t have a handle on this intriguing subject.

Here’s the problem. Motivational speakers and writers frequently oversimplify goal setting. Those who advocate what I’ll call the “traditional goal setting method” advise you to do the following to achieve your objective:

• Set a goal in other words, determine what you want to achieve

• Put the goal in writing

• Set a time deadline for the attainment of the goal

• Develop a plan and work the plan

• Visualize a successful result

• Maintain a positive attitude

• Measure your progress and make adjustments, where needed

• Persist until you reach your goal

All of this sounds great, except for one problem — most people don’t achieve their goals using this method! The vast majority fall way short of the mark. I’ve achieved many goals and also failed to achieve some goals with this system.

I’d also bet that virtually all of the people reading this article have failed to achieve many of their goals using this formula — despite the fact that they were positive and took considerable action.

Where did we go wrong? Why do we accomplish some goals using this formula, yet fail to achieve others? While I don’t pretend to have all the answers, here are some of my observations on the subject of goal setting.

1. Many people succeed without having specific goals. Over the years, I’ve noticed that there are many high achievers who have succeeded without setting goals at all.

• Actor Harrison Ford has said that he did not have a goal of becoming a movie star.

• Antonio Banderas said he never sets goals and finds goal setting very limiting.

• Cindy Crawford never set out to be a “supermodel.”

• Former Secretary of State Madeline Albright said she never set a goal to become Secretary of State — or, for that matter, to be appointed as Ambassador to the United Nations.

• And, I’m guessing that Vincent Van Gogh did not have a goal reduced to writing that said: “I will paint three masterpieces in the next 90 days and earn one million dollars.”

The bottom line: some people are hugely successful without using traditional goal setting methods.

2. Whether or not you set goals, you need clarity and passion to be successful. When I cite examples of those who succeeded without goals, I want to emphasize that these people still had a clear vision of what they wanted to do in their lives.

They were and are passionate about their work, they are constantly learning and growing in their field, they are willing to take risks, and they are committed to doing whatever it takes to keep moving forward. People who are vague and uncertain never attain long-term success.

3. The rules are different when it comes to business and sales. In business and in sales, I’ve found that to be successful, you DO need to be a goal setter (using many of the traditional methods). Here’s why: in sales, you need to get results quickly.

Either you produce, or you’re “out of the game.” Businesses can’t afford to take the view, “We’ll work hard and whenever we succeed, that’s okay.” With that approach, the business probably would not meet its payroll and would not gain the confidence of investors. There are some companies that prosper without setting specific goals, but these organizations are very much the exception.

More and more, businesses are using personality assessments to test applicants for sales positions and to determine beforehand whether the applicants have the potential to succeed in sales. This is a positive approach and helps to identify those who are well suited to play under these “rules.”

4. Some people are simply not suited to traditional goal setting models. Many people who advocate traditional goal setting methods claim it can work for anyone. I no longer believe that. If Harrison Ford worked as an insurance salesman, he probably would have failed miserably.

Some people simply don’t respond well to setting specific goals and achieving them within certain time deadlines. That’s not the way they perform at their maximum.

5. Failed goals usually reveal a lack of commitment. We have the ability to achieve most of the goals we set. However, we often lack a necessary ingredient: commitment. We think we’re committed to achieving a goal, but in reality, we’re not willing to do whatever it takes to accomplish the objective.

We get frustrated and eventually give up the goal. So, if you’re not making much progress on a goal, there’s a good chance that you’re not really committed.

6. Failed goals serve a purpose. It’s easy to look at failed goals as a disappointment or as a bad thing. I don’t see it that way, however. In fact, “failed” goals serve a purpose – to re-direct us to a better path.

Often, we set goals based on what others tell us to do – or what seems like a good way to be successful or make money. When we don’t achieve these goals, we give up on them and then have an opportunity to pursue a different path, which is often more in line with our abilities and our unique personalities.

7. There is an “X” factor when it comes to attaining goals. Sure, you need a positive attitude, enthusiasm and commitment to achieve a goal. But there’s also an intangible factor working behind the scenes – I call this the “X” factor.

As we’ve all seen in sporting events, the championship game can be decided by a bounce of the ball, a fraction of an inch or a missed call by a referee. Granted, it’s the prepared competitor that puts himself or herself in a position to win, but make no mistake about it, sometimes serendipity or fate seems to step in to help us achieve certain goals.

More than 40 years ago, Maxwell Maltz, M.D., wrote a classic book on goal setting entitled Psycho-Cybernetics. Dr. Maltz believed passionately that we need to have goals or targets. However, he thought it was counterproductive to try to figure out with the conscious mind how to attain the goal. He recommended focusing on the end result and allowing your automatic guidance system to determine the “means whereby” that goal is achieved.

My point is that goal setting is not a “one size fits all” concept. If I’ve confused a bunch of people here, that’s okay. If you out and out disagree with me, that’s fine, too. I want you to start thinking more about goal setting instead of simply following methods that don’t work for you.

Traditional goal setting methods work for some people, and I would encourage those people to continue using them. But they don’t work for everyone, and the statistics prove that very convincingly.

There is a path that will work for you. Keep challenging and fine-tuning the various approaches to goal setting and you’ll

Find a system that will produce positive results for you!

In his classic, “Old Man and the Sea,” Ernest Hemingway tells about a weary old fisherman who, like most of his village, has had hard times most of his life. He's barely eking out a living, and he goes out one day and decides to travel farther than usual to fish. And to his amazement, he hooks the largest fish he's ever seen in his life - so big he can't possibly bring it into his boat. So he begins to tow his prize fish behind his boat, excited about what this catch could mean and how it may be the beginning of a wonderful turn of his fortunes. It's the dream catch of his life! But as he comes into the harbor and up to the dock, his joy turns back to an even greater despair than before. All the while he's been towing his prize; the other creatures of the sea have been feeding on it. And all that's left of his dream is bones.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about “The Trouble With Life's Great Catches.”

Maybe one reason that story has enduring interest is that it's a mirror of many of our lives. We pursue what we think will give us what we've needed. We catch it, but our great catches, all too often, turn out to be just carcasses in the end. They gave us hope for a while and then they let us down.

So we go back out, fishing for something else that will be our answer. And ultimately, our next catch disappoints us, too. The trail behind us from our days even as a teenager is littered with the pieces of things that were supposed to make us happy but ultimately didn't. I couldn't help but notice a comment made by Johnny Carson's biographer after Johnny's death. This man who was being lauded as the best in his field, this man who made so many of us laugh so many times... here's what his biographer said: “I can't say that Johnny was ever a truly happy man. I don't think he would ever say he was a happy man.” He's not alone.

In a few sledgehammer words, Jesus Christ exposed all our futile expeditions to find answers for our life; and the only place really worth looking for it. In Mark 8:36, our word for today from the Word of God, Jesus said, “What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?” You can catch everything this world has to offer - its acclaim, its wealth, its pleasures, its success - and lose the only thing that really matters - your soul. It's your soul that's always hungry for something that you've never been able to find. And your soul is forever restless because you're away from the One you were made by; the One you were made for. In God's own words, “Your sins have separated you from your God” (Isaiah 59:2).

We've tried to fill a God-sized hole with things and people that can't begin to take His place. If we live like this, we'll live without peace and without meaning. If we die like this, we'll spend eternity without God and His love. Thank God, He didn't leave us separated from Him. He pursued us. He sent His Son, Jesus, to sacrifice His life for yours and mine - to take the rap for all our sin, that defiant self-rule of our lives.

So what gaining the whole world could never do, Jesus can do. He said, “He who comes to Me will never go hungry, and he who believes in Me will never be thirsty” (John 6:35). That could be you ... beginning today. Beginning the moment you admit your need for His forgiveness ... your readiness to turn the driver's seat over to Him ... your complete trust in Jesus and Him alone as your only hope. It is, quite simply, the end of your search.

You've been so busy, fishing for things that cannot save or cannot satisfy your soul. You've neglected your soul, but not anymore. This is the day you can find Jesus and find what your soul has been looking for so long.

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Copyright © Ron Hutchcraft Ministries, Inc., PO Box 400, Harrison, AR 72602. Used by permission. Written by Ron Hutchcraft. "Practical Answers to Real Life Issues"

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #27064]

It was the Scottish poet Robert Burns who, writing in his native Scottish tongue, said: “Best laid plans o' mice an' men gang aft agley”, meaning the best laid plans often go awry. The poet Burns was well known for drawing upon day-to-day occurrences to engage in deeper philosophical discourse.

In the instant case, the reference to mice was merely the setting for the poet to reflect on his own situation, in particular, and human life, in general. He chanced upon a mouse that had been uprooted by a plough shear, from the hole it had burrowed in a vacant piece of land. His poetic fancy taking wing, the poet imagines that the mouse would have the chosen the precise spot expecting to be left undisturbed right through the winter. The field, after all, had been left fallow after the harvest. He feels sorry for the mouse that must now face the full force of winter storm and sleet. He then goes on to console the mouse with the thought that such things happen to human beings as well.

Robert Burns may or may not have been correct about the heavy odds rodents face in organising their life unhindered by fate. But he was spot on in his perception about fate casting its long shadow when human beings set about planning their lives. Their plans misfire, often quite badly.

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I once heard a speaker who did one of those “let's have a show of hands” audience polls. Rebel that I am, I usually don't like these. So often they are trite or manipulative. But this one grabbed me ... so much so that I later used this poll at our church service last summer. The speaker asked people this series of questions: “How many of you would like to make a real difference with your lives? How many of you would like to have such a significant life that when you're gone, you'll leave this world a better place? Raise your hands.”

Everybody raised their hands.

Then he went on. “Okay, now ... how many of you have a PLAN for how you're going to do that?” There was some nervous laughter, and then in an audience of hundreds, one or two hands went up. We had been found out. “Making a difference” was important to us, but not important enough to give it serious thought.

My sense is that most people really WANT their lives to count. We want to make a real difference in the world ... even if only by touching the lives of a few people. And this is true especially in the church. As Christians, we've experienced so much, we've been blessed in so many ways -- and we want to share that with others. We want to help other people experience what we have in our relationship with God.

But that's as far as it goes. That's as far as we get in our thinking about this. We don't have a PLAN -- and so we don't make very much progress.

Author Tom Sine said recently that the biggest challenge we face in the church today is a CRISIS OF VISION. That is, a vision of what our lives could be. A vision of how we can make a difference with our lives and be a part of something significant. Many of us go through our whole Christian lives without ever really being intentional, or thoughtful, about what our lives could be by the grace of God.

Lily Tomlin once said, “I ALWAYS WANTED TO BE SOMEBODY. I JUST SHOULD HAVE BEEN MORE SPECIFIC.” The problem with not being specific about who we want to be is that we'll tend to DRIFT. We'll allow other people to dictate that vision for us. We'll drift into adopting the goals and mindset of the people around us, rather than God's. Let's face it: There is no shortage of people running around these day who have their own visions for the kind of people you and I should be. If we don't think hard about and decide what our values and goals should be, there are plenty of other people who would love to do that for us.

Unless we take time every so often to think about these questions, we'll just drift with the tide. In our culture today, this is dangerous. Once in a while, when real ships drift in the ocean or a lake, they wind up drifting into a harbor or some other safe destination. But most often the ones that drift tend to run aground somewhere, or crash into the rocks on the coastline.

Once in a while, people who drift might drift into a positive and meaningful life. But they're the exception. Most often, the ultimate destination for people who drift -- even Christians -- was summarized by Henry David Thoreau: THEY REACH THE END OF THEIR LIVES ONLY TO DISCOVER THAT THEY HAVEN'T REALLY LIVED.

What kind of a person do I really want to be? What's my real MISSION in life? How can I make my life COUNT?

At Bridgewood, our goal is to help you answer those questions. Not to answer them for you, but help you listen to God and discover His mission for your life. Once people have made the decision to become followers of Jesus Christ, our mission as a church is to help them discover and live out God's purpose for their lives. That's part of what it means to grow to become a “mature follower of Christ.” There is nothing more exciting, challenging, and rewarding than being on that journey together.

[see #30647 for a similar essay]

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Jim Carrey came to Hollywood years ago as a struggling standup comic. He had a wife and a baby and their small apartment had a mattress on the floor.

Around 1990 he wrote a check for $10,000,000 and put it in his wallet. He wrote it to “Jim Carrey, for acting services rendered”. He carried it in his wallet for 4 years.

In 1994 he was paid $10,000,000 for “Dumb and Dumber.” Well, at least he got his $10 million. In 2003 he was paid $25,000,000 for “Bruce Almighty.”

Do you wish you could plan YOUR life like this?

(sermon version by David Holwick)

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Other sources make the figure $20 million, but the figure above is correct. According to Carrey himself:

“I wrote myself a check for ten million dollars for acting services rendered and dated it Thanksgiving 1995. I put it in my wallet and it deteriorated. And then, just before Thanksgiving 1995, I found out I was going to make ten million dollars for ‘Dumb & Dumber.’ I put that check in the casket with my father because it was our dream together.”

-- Jim Carrey on The Oprah Winfrey Show, 1997 (http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/38176.html)

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Another version by Tom Venuto:

JIM CARREY’S CHECK

As a struggling young comedian trying to make it in the make or break city of Hollywood, Jim Carrey was just about ready to give up his dream of becoming a professional actor and comedian. He had just performed at an open mic session at one of the nightclubs in Los Angeles and had been booed off the stage by his audience. He sat by himself at the top of Mulholand Drive and looked out at the city below him — the city that held his future success or failure. He then pulled out his check book and wrote himself a check for $10 million dollars, post dated it for Thanksgiving 1995 and made a note on it: “for acting services rendered.” He then carried that check with him in his wallet everywhere he went from that day forward. By 1995, after the success of his blockbuster movies: Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, Dumb and Dumber, and The Mask, his contract price had risen to $20 million dollars.

http://www.tomvenuto.com/newsletter_archives/newsletter57.shtml

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #20929]

In the Spring 2007 issue of Kindred Spirit, Chuck Swindoll writes, “A friend of mine is one of those crazy runners. You know the type – fifteen miles a day, marathons, pilgrimages to his favorite running routes all over the country, an obsession with breaking personal records, or in fanatical running lingo, his ‘PRs’...

“But don’t you want to know why anyone would want to do this to his body? I asked my friend recently what he likes about running. ‘The finish line,’ he said. And there you have it. He runs because he has the finish line in sight. It motivates him to keep putting one blistered foot in front of the other. I guess we can all understand that to some degree. If we can remember our purpose, we can be motivated to improve our practice.”

Thomas* is struggling with his future.

He teaches English to businessmen in a northern provincial capital in China. He followed his parents’ dream that he get an education and move to a place with opportunities for a good life.

But that was before he became a Christian.

“When we attend college and get the certificate, we can get a good job and make money,” Thomas said. “We seldom think of going back [home]. In big cities we can have many opportunities. We can live well. We can enjoy life much better than in small cities.

“The people in [small cities] go to [provincial capitals]. The people in [provincial capitals] go to Beijing. The people in Beijing go abroad. That’s the progression.”

When Thomas was growing up, his father worked in a government print shop and his mother was a farmer. After Thomas’ father retired, his mother developed asthma and could not walk. Now the family lends their land to others free of charge.

“A woman came to our house and shared Jesus with [my mother], but she didn’t believe,” Thomas said. Eighteen months -- and much prayer -- passed before she believed in Jesus. But when she did, she found she could walk again. Now “she can cook and can go to church by bicycle.”

Thomas admits he was curious about the miracles he witnessed, but he did not share his mother’s belief in Christ. There is little Christian influence in his hometown.

“I did not have any spiritual life,” he said. “I just believed in myself -- like any unbeliever.”

When Thomas was 25, his mother introduced him to a church that changed his life.

“I saw so many miracles. In my house church, many believers were healed of illnesses, including cancer. The most important thing is I was touched by Jesus’ love. When we get together and my pastor prays, Jesus is with us, we can feel the love. Only God can change us, so that is what happened with me. God changed me. I’m going to go where He leads me. That’s my future.”

But Thomas is not sure where God is leading him, and he struggles with his parents’ expectations for his life. Should he continue work as an English teacher in the city or should he work in ministry at his house church? He is praying for God’s guidance.

“Before I knew Jesus, I didn’t care what I would do,” Thomas said. “I worked for myself, for only what concerned me. I am changed, so now I’m waiting to see what God wants me to do. In my future, my prayer is what about others, not about me.”

________

*Name changed.

Eleanor Roosevelt arrived at the seat of power as President Franklin D. Roosevelt's wife, but her power was much more pronounced than that of any other First Lady. Mrs. Roosevelt was a one-woman war on poverty during the Depression. She visited coal mines, hospitals, and squatters’ camps all over the nation. She traveled around the world, speaking with kings, presidents, and the destitute with equal enthusiasm and compassion. During her husband’s presidency, she acted as unofficial ambassador to the world and devil’s advocate to his conscience and the conscience of a nation. She achieved all this in spite of the fact that she was painfully shy.

After her husband’s death, with no official capacity, Mrs. Roosevelt continued to be a spokesperson for dozens of causes. When President Truman appointed her to the newly formed League of Nations, Henry Cabot Lodge gave her what was considered an inconsequential committee concerned with human rights. Lodge did not realize that he gave Roosevelt a perfect platform from which to launch a worldwide fight for fairness and equality.

She was, at first, ignored and minimized. Every place she turned she encountered barriers that would have discouraged a less passionate person. She cajoled and compromised. She pleaded and demanded. Everyone she came into contact with felt the power of her convictions. Her work on the “Bill of Human Rights” for the newly formed United Nations came to fruition after four years of arduous effort. To date, this document has been used as the basis for the constitutions of sixty nations! Eleanor Roosevelt was on a mission and she made a major difference in our world. (1)

If you and I are not as powerful as we ought to be, maybe it is because we have no mission burning in our soul.

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1. Sheila Murray Bethel, Making a Difference (New York: Berkley Books, 1990).

We should believe great things.

Founder of modern missionary movement, William Carey:

Was an impoverished English shoemaker.

Converted and became a Baptist lay preacher.

Wrote a book on missions.

(Most Christians thought missions was only for Apostles.)

(God would do it in his own good time.)

Carey preached a moving sermon before a group of pastors:

"Attempt great things for God,

Expect great things from God."

One year later, 1793, Carey and his family sailed for India.

In five years he had translated the NT into Bengali.

By the end of his career he translated the whole Bible into

3 languages and founded a college that exists today.

Great difficulties:

No converts for 7 years.

His wife died of insanity.

A warehouse fire destroyed 30 years of translation work.

Through it all he never gave up the faith.

His secret for accomplishing great things?

"I can plod. I can persevere in any definite task. To this

I owe everything."

What can we accomplish if we set our faith to it?

Also see "From Jerusalem to Iraian Jaya" by Ruth Tucker, p. 114.

[see also 1114]

#1110

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Quotes on Random Acts of Kindness

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"When I was quite small my immigrant Russian grandmother once told me that people in this country give from the wrong place. 'When you give from here,' she declared pointing to her solar plexus and calling some word that I could never pronounce, 'it's like keeping a ledger book. I give you three so you give me three. I sweep the floor so you carry the bundles.'

"She pulled the wisps of white hair out of her eyes with the back of her red hands, shaking her head back and forth, tssking her tongue against her teeth. 'That's not giving, that's trading. You give your soul away when you give like that. Giving is supposed to be from here,' she said, pointing to the center of her chest with a feathery finger. 'When you give from your heart it's not to get anything back. There is no owing or owed. You just give because you want to give. When you give like this, it fills you up. It can't empty you.'

"'Your heart can never run out. The more you give from there, the fuller it will be.' Then she wiped her hands on the yellow apron and pulled me to her. 'It's like giving a hug. You remember this, kitzaleh. Remember to give from your heart. Even to strangers. When you give like this, there are no strangers. And remember to notice when other people give to you like this and be sure to say thank you.'" -- Dawna Markova, Ph.D

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"Do every act of your life as if it were your last."

-- Marcus Aurelius

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"We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects."

-- Herman Melville

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"What you deny to others will be denied to you, for the plain reason that you are always legislating for yourself; all your words and actions define the world you want live in."

-- Thaddeus Golas

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"If someone comes to you asking for help, do not say in refusal, 'Trust in God, HE will help.' Rather act as if there were no God, and no one to help except you."

-- Zaddik

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"It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end."

-- Ursula K. LeGuin

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"It's fearful to know we're connected to everything in the universe, because then we're responsible."

-- Glenda Taylor

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"Tenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair but manifestations of strength and resolution."

-- Kahil Gibran

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"I believe that man will not merely endure; he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among the creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of kindness and compassion."

-- William Faulkner

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"I keep my ideals, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart."

-- Anne Frank

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U.S. Christians are becoming isolationist in regard to missions. Most

Christians give 2.4% of income to missions. The world's population is growing

faster than the church's ability to evangelize. By 1994 more than 30,000

missionaries will retire. Only about 4,000 will step into their shoes.

Churches build mansions while sending nickels and dimes overseas. Colleges

and Urbana are calling young people to full time work, but few churches are.

Missions pastor Paul Borthwick says in July 1985 "Evangelical Missions

Quarterly": "Many young people get their 'call' to missions in Christian

college organizations, or at the Urbana missionary conferences. That's great,

but I am chagrined that so few of the church's best people are selected and

called forth by the local church."

#919

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The 18 Most Common Self-Defeating Behaviors in Business

1. PROCRASTINATING: If you're always late on completing things, people stop relying on you; soon they start resenting you.

2. GETTING INVOLVED WITH THE WRONG PEOPLE: Yes, there are bad people in the world. If you keep giving them the benefit of the doubt, you'll be the one who has to clean up the mess.

3. SAYING YES WHEN YOU WANT TO SAY NO: It will result in burnout, loss of credibility, and loss of respect from others and yourself.

4. ASSUMING OTHERS DON'T WANT ANYTHING IN RETURN: It is human nature to almost always want something in return, even when people say they don't. Thinking ahead about what that might be can save you problems when others try to collect.

5. PLAYING IT SAFE: The world is in a rapid state of change. Doing the same old thing over and over and expecting it to be good enough may turn out not to be so safe after all.

6. ALWAYS HAVING TO BE RIGHT: Know-it-alls who don't know what they're talking about are jerks, whereas know-it-alls who do know what they're talking about are merely asses. Always having to be right can create so much resentment that you'd better always be right, because you're building a constituency of people who can't wait to see you fall on your face.

7. FOCUSING ON WHAT OTHERS ARE DOING WRONG: This is a demotivating habit. Focusing on what the other person is not doing makes it difficult for you to keep trying hard.

8. NOT LEARNING FROM YOUR MISTAKES: Successful people don't make fewer mistakes than unsuccessful people, but they repeat fewer mistakes.

9. TALKING WHEN NOBODY'S LISTENING: This leads you to think that what you have said is going to be done, when in fact it's not. To make matters worse, you have to repeat the entire process. And this time you're going to be angry.

10. TAKING THINGS TOO PERSONALLY: When people take criticism too personally, instead of seeing that it is about fixing a problem, the problem becomes larger and takes longer to fix.

11. HAVING UNREALISTIC EXPECTATIONS: When you confuse what is reasonable with what is realistic (it's reasonable to want to re-engineer your business; it's not realistic to do it all at once), you set yourself up to fail.

12. TRYING TO TAKE CARE OF EVERYBODY: You can't take care of everybody and do a decent job. In attempting to take care of everyone, nobody, including yourself, will be satisfied.

13. REFUSING TO "PLAY GAMES": Politics, schmoozing, and small talk are all necessary in order to succeed.

14. BEING ENVIOUS OF OTHERS: Teamwork is ruined when team members envy each other to the extent that they root against each other.

15. QUITTING TOO SOON: You have more control over trying or quitting than over success or failure. If you always quit, you'll never succeed; if you always try, you'll eventually succeed.

16. LETTING FEAR RUN YOUR LIFE: You were bad at science and math. The Internet is coming whether you like it or not. If you let fear run your life, it just might run you out of your job.

17. NOT MOVING ON AFTER A LOSS: When you spend more time NOT cutting your losses than you do moving ahead, you can't move ahead.

18. NOT ASKING FOR WHAT YOU NEED: What's important to you is not necessarily important to others. If you don't ask for what you need - whether it's something to help you do your job, or a promotion - you're leaving it to other people's imaginations. If you think your well being is a high priority to them, you have a good imagination.

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From Get Out of Your Own Way: Overcoming Self-Defeating Behavior by Mark Goulston, M.D. and Philip Goldberg; Perigee/Berkley Books. Dr. Mark Goulston is the LifeSkills expert at http://www.lifescape.com and UCLA psychiatrist. His email address is dr.mark@lifescape.com.

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God didn’t give you a first birth so that you could be a failure. If you are a Christian, then He didn’t give you a second birth so that you should be a spiritual failure. In either case, if we fail, we didn’t live up to the potential God had in mind for us.

Phil. 1:6 (NLT) says, “And I am sure that God, who began the good work within you (starting with both births), will continue His work until it is finally finished on that day when Jesus Christ comes back again.” That’s His plan — to work within you,” if you’ll let Him. Don’t expect Him to do everything for you. We each have a responsibility to God to praise Him with our life by meeting our potential. You can do it?

• “Ideas without action are worthless.” — Harvey Mackay

• “Some folks go through life pleased that the glass is half-full. Others spend a lifetime lamenting that it’s half-empty. The truth is: There is a glass with a certain volume of liquid in it. From there, it’s up to you!” — Dr. James S. Vuocolo

• “Nine-tenths of wisdom is appreciation. Go find somebody’s hand and squeeze it, while there’s time.” — Dale Dauten

• Don’t spend the last half of your life regretting the first half.

• Emotion without devotion is nothing but commotion

• “How you respond to the challenge in the second half will determine what you become after the game, whether you are a winner or a loser.” — Lou Holtz, college football coach

Questions to Ponder

1. What is my current second-half challenge?

2. How do I define winning in this situation?

3. How do I define a “Winner” in life?

Board games are an interesting barometer of American culture. What does the changes in the game LIFE say about us?

In 1860, the year Abraham Lincoln was elected President, a lanky, long-nosed, twenty-three-year-old Yankee named Milton Bradley invented his first board game, on a red-and-ivory checkerboard of sixty-four squares. He called it the Checkered Game of Life. Play starts at Infancy, and ends, usually but not always, at Happy Old Age, though landing on Suicide, with a noose around your neck, is more common than you might think, and means, inconveniently, that you’re dead.

“The game represents, as indicated by the name, the checkered journey of life,” Bradley explained, in his Rules of the Game. There are good patches, and bad, in roughly equal number. On the one hand: Honesty, Bravery, Success. On the other: Poverty, Idleness, Disgrace. Even when you’re heading for Happiness you can end up at Ruin: passed out, drunk and drooling, on the floor of a seedy-looking tavern where Death darkens the door disguised as a debt collector.

The Checkered Game of Life made Milton Bradley a brand name. In 1960, to celebrate its centennial, the company he founded released a commemorative Game of Life. It bears almost no resemblance to its nineteenth century namesake. Bradley’s game about vice, virtue, and the pursuit of happiness was reinvented as a lesson in Cold War consumerist conformity. Teensy plastic station wagons are filled with Mommies and Daddies and ride the highway of life, earning money, buying furniture, and having pink and blue babies. Whoever earns the most money wins. Thirty-five million copies were sold.

In 1992 the company revised the game again and marketed it to babyboomers. Station wagons became minivans and you can have a Midlife Crisis. In 2007 Hasbro (which bought out Milton Bradley) comes out with “Game of Life: Twists & Turns.”

The evolution of the game reflects the changes in our culture. Milton Bradley came from a family ruled, for generations, by nothing so much as an angry God. A series of New England ancestors had been captured or killed by Indians. Still, the story of Bradley’s ancestors was a story not of failure but of fate: God had chosen to visit them with affliction, and there was nothing they could do but praise Him. In his application to the U.S. Patent Office, Bradley insisted that his game was “intended to forcibly impress upon the minds of youth the great moral principles of virtue and vice.” But the Checkered Game of Life isn’t a race to heaven; it’s a series of calculations about the best route to collect the most points, fastest. Accumulate, or fail.

The 1960 version of the game is very different. You never die, you just quit working. There are rewards and penalties, but none are morally freighted; the game lacks any sense of life as a battle between vice and virtue. The object of the two games is different, too: at Life’s Day of Reckoning, you count your cash, not your good deeds. And Life’s most important squares are its red-letter “PAY DAY!”s.

The 1960 version of Life got plenty of criticism. It is so relentlessly amoral and cash-conscious that a 1990s team that tried to redesign it, pretty much gave up. They did add Life Tiles which allow players to do good deeds, like collecting $200,000 for Saving an Endangered Species.

The 2007 version will be very different. The “Game of Life: Twists & Turns” is not a checkerboard of choices or a fixed and fated path. There is, instead, a multitude of paths. There is no place on the board called “Happy Old Age” or “Millionaire Acres” or even “Finish.” This is actually the game’s selling point: it has no goal. Life is . . . aimless. (The game’s box shouts, “A THOUSAND WAYS TO LIVE YOUR LIFE! YOU CHOOSE.”) You get as many points for scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef as you do for donating a kidney. Money is still a big feature, although it isn’t money anymore – players use Life-Visa-brand “credit cards” to keep track of Life Points. Lots of debt is not a big problem. In old versions of the game, there’s a square for that kind of thing. It’s called the Road to Folly.