I admitted in an earlier post “the round church” that my goals were focused on getting into college, being nice and receiving attention from boys with the hope that that one day I would get married. A further goal, once I got married, was to have kids. I appreciate that many women would consider me to be very fortunate to be happily married with kids, after receiving a university degree from a good university. I am thankful. However, it is easy to base our happiness and sense of fulfillment on whether we have realized our own goals or satisfied the goals that our parents established for us when we were kids.

The reality is that there are many depressed and disillusioned people who have not achieved their goals who feel let down by God and are possibly jealous of others who seem to be living a more successful or happy life. We should know by now that when the princess gets married she does not necessarily live happily ever. It is likely that her marriage hits at least one rocky patch and her kids rebel, calling her “stupid” and causing her to go to bed early in tears more often than she could have imagined… She may look at her single friend’s interesting career and tidy apartment and wonder what went wrong.

Christian women need to re-evaluate their goals in line with the Bible and God’s priorities. All of us have experienced disappointments and rather than becoming resentful we should turn over our past as well as our future to Jesus, seeking to please him in all that we do. We can get used to our own grumbling, complaining attitude assuming that this is normal. It is normal but it is not Christian. In Philippians 4:14 the apostle Paul encourages us to do “everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless children of God in a crooked and depraved generation in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life – in order that I may boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labor in vain”. Paul was single, frequently in jail, persecuted, near death on several occasions, on the move constantly and there was no sign of a stable home for him to come home to every evening. Perhaps we should expect him to have been in and out of the psychologist’s office but instead he was focused on Christ. His goal, the purpose of his life’s race, was to be a blameless child of God sharing the”word of life” with others. Paul knew that all those lost people needed the Word of life: they needed Jesus. He did not want to live in vain and as God’s voice, he is encouraging us to live a life of purpose, way beyond the goals that we have dreamed up.

If you are single, thank God, if you are married thank him, if you are grieving trust him and if you are resentful let it go. Let’s focus our eyes on Jesus, confessing that our priorities are often pathetic and that our dreams are self centered.

Shine like a star for Jesus

Let’s share God’s goals. Let’s reach out to a lost, hurting or indifferent world offering Jesus, the only one who can radically change our destiny. Are you ready to walk away from the grumbling and complaining and shine for him?

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