I think God sets goals for us as his kids.
I think I do this for my kids too.

Like any good parent, God sets up circumstances and then sees how we will cope with them. Occasionally, He might throw us what the American’s delightfully term, “a curveball.”
This is a situation that surprises, unsettles or releases an unpleasant emotion or characteristic in ourselves that we would prefer was not there.
Will we catch the ball?
Will we lie down and cry if we don’t?

God’s curveballs are not at all ‘curved’ from His perspective, of course. They are straight.
They don’t take Him by surprise.
They are designed, purposeful, and positively alive with potential.
They are wonderfully intentional.

They are designed with the added bonus of CREATIVITY. They are not passive, useless, hopeless or arbitrary.
God’s surprises for us are creative curves.
Designed in part:
To make us more like Him.
To make us think.
To make us turn our faces away from something that will never satisfy.
To MAKE us.
And sometimes to break us in the process.

As a woman who has been incredibly broken and very much made new again over the years, I know this too well.

But it is all part of the intentionality of our Father.
He knows that he has to take the stabilisers off our little bikes sometimes. Otherwise we will get into bad habits, think we are more able than we are, braver than we are and CRUCIALLY more independent that we were ever designed to be.
God didn’t design us to look after number 1. All on our own. He designed us to look after others.
He designed us primarily to bring a “flourishing” to anything we turn out hands to.
That means strengthening the weak and the strong.

So what kind of goals is God setting you at the moment?

For me, it is the simple small things.
He’s not talking to me on giant wasteland billboards but in the tiny everyday mundane-looking habits that we can so easily overlook.

God is talking to me about my prayer life. He’s speaking to me about what goes into my mouth and what kind of words come out. He’s asking me if life is satisfying me or if there is something missing.

In my experience, whenever God asks me a question like that it’s because He knows the answer. And actually, so do I.

When we begin to put out HOPE in anything semi permanent, anything that could let us down, die, anyone that might forget, leave town, get cancelled, be changed, be mismanaged, misunderstood, miscommunicated or just missed, we will be heart-broken. God understands that. Thats why HIS goals for us are always about getting us to focus on the things that satisfy.
HIS WORD
HIS PRESENCE
HIS CALLING

Lets get our goals straight people.
Then we will be ready for the curves.