Young people like football. It is a fast moving game and is very exciting. Even though there are many interesting moments in football, the crowning moment happens when a goal is scored. Then there is a great celebration among fans and teammates. At that moment everyone rushes to congratulate the person who scored the goal!
Life is like a game of football. And to succeed in life you should have goals in life. If a goal is absent in your life, you will be kicked here and there by any passerby. That brings us to the question, What is a goal? In simple terms, it can be understood as your aim or ambition in life.
What happens when you have a goal in life? First of all let me tell you what happens if you do not have a goal in life. I still remember the opening sentence of a chapter in the Moral Science textbook we had to learn at school. It said: “The greatest tragedy in life is to stand at the end of it and see it was wasted!” Your life will be wasted if you do not have a worthy goal in life.
That brings us to the next question. What is a worthy goal in life? Is it gaining money? Is it chasing after happiness? Is it getting big educational degrees? All these are good. But beyond all this your goal in life should be to make a positive difference in the life of others.
For example, somebody wants to become a doctor. That goal can come true only if he completes his higher education well. It can bring him a lot of happiness. Moreover, it can bring him money. But beyond all this, if he has the aim of serving people and helping them live healthy lives; his goal is a worthy one. If you look at great men and women who shaped human history, you will find that they all had the good of others in mind.
Again, if you look at the lives of successful people one common thing you will find is that each one of them had a big goal in mind. And they went after that goal in spite of all fear, failure, doubt and discouragement. Such people never allowed other distractions to turn their focus away from their goal. They concentrated on their goal with a single-minded aim.
Let us take an example from the Bible. Saul was a man with a single-minded aim of persecuting the followers of Jesus Christ. But after Jesus Christ revealed himself to Saul when he was on the road to Damascus (Acts 9) his life completely changed. More than that, his goal changed. From then on his big goal in life was to know Jesus Christ (Philippians 3:10, 14) and to tell others about him in places where nobody had gone to preach before (Romans 15:20).
He compared life to a race and his big ambition was to finish the race (Acts 20:24). And he wanted to share with as many as possible the greatness of Jesus Christ before his life was over. Everything else in his life came second to this goal in life. So he went on missionary journeys in Asia and Europe, and faced many hardships in life. He did not turn away from his goal in the face of these persecutions.
Therefore his life still impacts the world. Some 14 letters, a major portion of the New Testament, are written by him. There is not one among us his life has not impacted. Such is the impact of a great goal in life. And surely there is no greater goal in life than knowing Jesus Christ, the Son of God, our Saviour, Redeemer, and Friend, who shed his blood on the cross and died for you and me!
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