Goals Part Four: Relationship With God

As we come to the fourth goal, if you recall I had four areas that I wanted to begin to make goals for  in  life, these four areas were chosen because I felt that these were the four most important parts of my life.  For you these may not be, but I would encourage you to think about it and try to come up with four areas’ you think are important and begin setting goals and keeping track of them.  As I was saying this fourth one I took a long hard look at how I could make goals for it, how does one measure their relationship with God?  I pondered this and prayed about it, I realized that my relationship with God trickles down to every aspect of my life.  I was thinking about this as we began to study Charles Spurgeon’s book, The Power Of Prayer In A Believer’s Life.  I bring this up because as I was reading the book Spurgeon talks about  John 15:1-17, This piece of scripture talks about how Christ is the vine and we are branches.  I have read, listened to, even preached on this verse who knows how many times.  But as I read it here and as Spurgeon talked about it, it took on a whole new outlook for me.  I think it was when I read this part, “take care that you abide in Christ when you are being pruned.  A brother says ‘since I became a Christian, I have had more troubles than ever.  Men ridicule me, the devil tempts me, and my business affairs have gone wrong.’”  As I thought about this it struck me that we are always being pruned, we are always growing and as we grow we must be careful.  Careful to protect our faith, to abide in Christ, what does it look like if we are abiding in Christ?  John 15:5 Christ says; “Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing.”  Notice the part where he says “apart from me you can do nothing?”  That is an important part right there it says a lot.  If we are going to abide in Christ that means that we are always growing in Christ. When we stop growing then we have allowed ourselves to be separated from Him.  He is the vine, it is through Him we are nourished, and through His love that we grow to love others we once hated. Through His forgiveness that we are able to forgive those who wronged us.

What does all this have to with goals?  A lot, as I thought and pondered on this piece of scripture I realized that I need to make it my goal to truly abide in Christ, to focus on His words, on the bible, and prayer.  To allow myself to take off my self-pride, self-justice, stop doing things to make me look better.  The thing about when we realize that Christ is the vine we realize that we are able to gain so much more if we allow Him to guide and direct our lives. When we realize that we are the branches we allow God to begin to prune and cut away at the things that need cut out of our lives.  It can be a painful process and I am sure at times it will be but my goal is to allow Christ to become vine and for me to be the branch.