Sometime in high school, I began, each time I found myself getting stressed out or anxious, to stop and ask myself this question: What is my ultimate life goal? If I have been stressed or anxious, it has usually been because I've been striving toward the completion of a goal which does not actually matter so much in the grand scheme of things. As a college student, when I became anxious about my studies, I would (try to) ask myself, "What is my ultimate aim in life? To be the perfect student? To get a good job?" No.
Still today, I often ask myself the same question: "What is my ultimate life goal?" To be a good writer? A teacher? A missionary? A wife? A mother? A sister or daughter? Employee? Nanny?" The answer is D. None of the above. We can get caught up in having good goals, even good "Christian" goals or "dreams" such as these, and hold them as being more important and better than the world's simply because they are not "sinful" or what we who are Christian consider "worldly." We can sacrifice a job opportunity, be generous in our financial resources, put all sorts of things on-hold "for the sake of the Kingdom" without having a totally given heart for that same Kingdom. We can act like the older son in the Parable of the Prodigal Son and complain to the Lord, "Wait, I gave you everything, I've been giving you my life, so where's my reward?" A response such as this from us reveals where our heart truly lies--still in this world and not in Heaven. As Tim Keller argues throughout Counterfeit Gods, idols are more often than not good things placed above God.
So, as I have tried to regularly remind myself over the past several years, my ultimate life goal is to be a saint, to be with the Lord eternally in Heaven, and to bring as many people as I can with me through the work of evangelism. This is the only thing that really matters. As Paul writes in his second letter to the Corinthians, our moments of anxiety, suffering, and hardship on earth are collectively all but a "slight momentary affliction preparing [us] for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, because we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal" (2 Corinthians 4: 16-8). And oftentimes, we should probably look at the hardships and afflictions we suffer and be able to admit, in humility that they are the fruit of our own flesh and weakness not of someone else's wrondoing or weakness.
We can submit to this if we are humble; the Lord is never scandalized by our weakness so neither should we be (something wise someone once said to me). We have only to admit that we are weak, that we are oftentimes idolaters, that we are sinners, and then turn to the Lord and ask him to be the Savior which he purposed to be: "This was according to the eternal purpose which he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and confidence of access through our faith in him" (Ephesians 3:11-12).
The Lord Jesus Christ says to us, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven." (Matthew 5: 3). And who are these "poor"? Scott Hahn and Curtis Mitch: "Those who recognize their need for God and his grace. Unattached to this world, they find their security in the Lord and rely on his mercy rather than their merits or material wealth."
May we recognize our need for God and his grace, that we may be able to recognize it when He surely sends it. Amen.
