Chief End of Man: Goals Series - Part 1

Time to Refocus
Question: What is the chief end of man? Answer: Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever. (The Westminster Shorter Catechism)

This was the basis for the sermon this beautiful, cold Sunday morning. Oh, I love our church. One reason is that you never get to walk away empty handed. Pastor Drake always has a meaty service planned and has continued so, even in the midst of his knee surgery and recovery. This morning was no exception and was FULL of Scripture to open our eyes, that daily we must refocus on God and live every minute for Him.

As I mentioned before, I easily get distracted. Realizing that God has called me to be a multi-faceted kind of woman, I need to make sure that those various areas are glorifying Him. So, in order to not get distracted, to stay on course, I need to make a plan that I can stick to; a plan of variety. It all came together for me this morning, having started last night when I was reading one of Brandi's posts on her goals for the year.

So, here's the plan:

Taking the 7 days of the week (our God is a God of order!) and the 7 areas that He has assigned to me, I will have one area each day that I focus on learning and growing. I will have a reading resource of some sort (ebook, physical book, e-zine, etc.) that I set up on the nightstand. Each night I will read my assigned pages. These are goals and not set in stone. If I'm reading really deep stuff, I don't want to be forced to read 10 pages when I was getting overwhelmed at 6. Sometimes what I read doesn't necessarily fall into a particular category, though. Like when I read the Duggar's book, I didn't get bogged down, but it covered almost all my categories. Don't have a plan what I would do in that case in the future, yet.

Here are my categories and the days currently assigned:

Sunday - Bible Study (this is when I will work on the Bible study that we are doing with the ladies at church)
Monday - Marriage
Tuesday - Motherhood
Wednesday - Homeschool
Thursday - Organization
Friday - Health
Saturday - Finances/Homesteading

Many times people believe that God doesn't care about a particular part of their life. They separate their life into God's area, Work, Home, and Me. Really, God wants to be in EVERY area! It is because of this that I'm particularly careful about what I read in every area and make sure that it is from a Christian worldview. There are some instances that this may not be able to be achieved, but I have found it rare. God is the author of marriage, parenthood, health and homeschooling. I've even found some of the best resources in organization, finances, and homesteading to be written with a Biblical worldview.

These are the areas that I will be setting my goals in, too! And all of them based on what God wants for me to be doing in each area - not what I think is best.

photo from: http://www.pinmin.org/