- Well, hey everybody, happy new year. 2023, can you believe it? Welcome to a brand new year. Welcome to Highlands at all of our in-person locations. Thanks so much for starting off the new year with us. Maybe you're watching online or on TV, but I would just say if you're starting a new year with a church service with us here at Highlands, man, that's a great way to start the new year. So make yourself at home. Welcome and thanks so much for being with us. So today, I wanna talk to you a little bit about where we're going and how we can sort of change as we move forward. And one of the key verses that I wanna look at today, we find in Romans chapter 12 verse two. And this is what Paul says, "Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." Now we all know this is the truth. You will either conform to this world, which is really easy to do in the culture in which we live, or you can be transformed. And over the next couple of months, starting next week, I want to really encourage you, I want you to come all through the month of January. We're doing a four-week series, we're calling it Reengage. I'm telling you guys, I'm so excited about how we're gonna start 2023. So I just want you to be a part of it, I want you to be with us. So these next couple of months, we're gonna be hearing so much about transformation, how God can transform you and actually how God desires to transform us to be more like Him. And when we get to be more like Him, we all win. We know that's better. God, He created you to be unique. We have a unique fingerprint, thumbprint, hand print. We have a unique heartbeat. There is no one else exactly like you. And the problem is we all start off as originals, but often we end up as copies of other people and we get conformed and we get pressured and we get pushed into a mold that our world wants us to be. And often, instead of being who God desired for us to be, we settle for something far less. The same thing can happen in a church as well. So again, over the next couple of months, we wanna position ourselves and our church to take ground, to move forward. We have a great, great opportunity. Now, in order to be healthy as a person, I think you gotta have some goals. And we all know the beginning of a new year, I mean, what better time? There is no better time all year than to set some goals for you to be a better you. And not only is that true for you as a person, I want you to be thinking about setting some goals for your life, but we've been thinking about that as a church as well. And in order for you to be healthy, you gotta have some goals. And I think same thing for our church, in order for our church to be healthy, we gotta have some goals. So in the church, we call this mission and vision. And our mission is really why we exist, is what I'm gonna be talking to you about over the next four weeks. And again, I want to encourage you to come. And then I've asked Pastor Mark to sort of help us in the month of February with vision and we're gonna talk where God is leading us. So our mission is why we exist and our vision is where God would have us go. So again, we've prayed about this, we've thought about it so long and I'm telling you, I'm over the top about who we are as a church, how God has defined us, the goals and the mission He has given us. It's gonna be awesome. Our mission and vision includes some goals that we believe that God would have us go after in 2023. And when you hear the word goals, often our emotions sort of bubble up, don't they? Sometimes we get excited about goals and sometimes we get really hopeful and then sometimes we hear about goals, we go, oh my goodness, it's a little dread. There could be a little disappointment. For most of us, to be honest, it's sort of a strange combination of both of those. Maybe when you set goals and you got good intentions and man, you start out the new year and you're just on fire and then it sort of fizzles out. And maybe you keep failing at a big goal, maybe accomplishing goals for you personally, it just hasn't got you to where you wanna be in life. Well, I would say, if that's you, you're not alone. That's true a lot of us. And why is that? Well, mainly because most of us haven't been actually taught how to properly set goals or even what goals are. And the goals that we need to set would help us end up to be who we really wanna be and who God wants us to be. So today is all about your future, all right? I'm gonna talk to you about the future of you, I'm gonna talk to you about the future of our church, making the best of the rest of your life and we're gonna talk about these things over the next few weeks. So again, I want you to come, I want you to be a part of it. And today, I wanna give you a few reasons why it's so important for you to learn how to set good goals, all right? Why are goals so important in order to change our lives? So I'm gonna give you four things today. Here's the first thing. The Scripture says that when we set goals, that goals are actually a spiritual responsibility. Now you might look at me and you might think, what? I mean, you may have never ever heard that before, but when you study the Bible, there's no doubt about it that the God who created you, He desires for you to have some goals in your life, and actually it's a spiritual responsibility. Do you know that God, He set goals? He did. He set goals for the universe He created, He set goals for planet Earth. God had goals for history. God has goals for eternity. That's the kind of God we serve. I love Isaiah in chapter 45 in verse 18, it says this, for this is what the Lord says, "He who created the heavens, He is God. He who fashioned and made the earth, He founded it. He did not create it to be empty." You begin to see the heart of God. I mean God created this entire universe, but you know what? I mean, He could have just sat back and looked at the magnificence of it. He could have enjoyed it all by Himself, but He didn't create it to be empty, but He formed it to be inhabited. That's us and He says, "I am the Lord. There is no other." And God certainly has goals, not only for the universe, but God has goals for your life. The Bible tells us that Jesus set goals. In fact, He announced publicly that His next goal was gonna be this. And He would go about and He would accomplish that goal. And then He would say, "Now I'm gonna do this." If you study the ministry of Jesus, it was very much goal-oriented. Every person who walked with God in the Bible, you can find examples of them being goal-directed. Now we don't have time, but I could give you many, many examples. But today, I want to give you one and it's one that we're all familiar with. Paul says in Philippians chapter three, I love what he says. He says, "I know that I am not yet what God wants me to be." Can anybody else agree with that? Man, I read Paul and I'm like, "That's me. I agree with you, Paul. I know I'm not what God wants me to be." He says, "I haven't reached that goal, but I keep moving toward it to make it mine because Christ made me and saved me for this. I know that I haven't yet reached my goal, but there's one thing I always do, forgetting the past, straining toward what is ahead. I keep my eyes focused on the goal so that I may one day win the prize that God has called me to and I have received through Christ and the life above." Now I love as Paul explains this and then he sort of challenges, he talks about him and then this last little sentence, he challenges us and he says, "All of you who are spiritually mature should think this same way too." So Paul says, "Hey, don't live in the past, but focus forward on the goal that God has for you for the future." I think it's safe to say Paul was goal-oriented. He says, "I haven't reached the goal, but my eyes are focused on the goal." Now, why is it important for us to set goals? Well, because God says it's a spiritual responsibility. You're either gonna set goals and you're gonna decide what's important in your life or you know the truth, other people are gonna set your goals for you and they're gonna decide what's important in your life. So number one, it's a spiritual responsibility. Here's the second thing, goals are actually just statements of faith. This is what I believe, all right? A lot of people will think, a goal? I mean, isn't that like what athletes do? Isn't the goal like a business thing? Isn't that what businesses do? Well, I'm sure hopefully athletes have goals and business have goals, but honestly, setting goals, it's a statement of faith. It's a spiritual habit that we all need to develop. When we set a goal, we're actually just saying to God, "Lord, we need your help in this. This is a faith statement for us." In other words, if you're a believer in Jesus Christ and you set a goal, what you're saying is, "I believe," this is the faith part, "that God wants me to accomplish such and such by a certain time." And when we're able to do that, it's simply a statement of faith. This is what I believe God wants to do in my life. So goals, again, they're just faith statements that as we pray and as we seek God, He gives us, and goals really should be faith-stretching. I mean, God sets goals for our life that are gonna stretch our faith. And the bigger your goal, the more faith that you'll have to have and you want your faith stretched. That's sort of like your spiritual workout. We go to the gym for our physical workout, but setting goals is really our physical workout. And that pleases God. He wants you to have a goal-stretching verse in mind. I love what Paul says in Ephesians 3:20, this is what he says. He says God can do anything, far more than you could ever imagine or guess or dare to request in your wildest dreams. Now, I don't know about you, but I can come up with some pretty big dreams, can't you? And I love to dream big. I love to be around people who sort a blue sky. Nobody's ever accused me of being a small thinker. I've always had big goals. A little piece of advice. I think this is from Rick Warner or Craig Groeschel or somebody. It's not me, but this is what they said. Let this size of your God determine the size of your goal. Man, isn't that awesome? I think that's awesome. A little story about our church 'cause I wanna not only encourage you personally to set goals, but I wanna talk to you about some goals we've set in our church. As we finish up a year, I have been here now 12 years. And when I became the pastor of Highlands, I mean, I would do what you would do when you take a new job. I began to assess the church and I tried to meet as many of you as I could. I wanted to learn so much about this exciting place. I wanted to know what was great, I wanted to know something that was holding us back and I wanted to know something that we could all come together and just go after. What are those big, hairy, audacious goals? And after a few months, I determined that our church honestly was incredible. I mean, it was one God's story after another and we had grown exponentially from day one. And God had really just gone beyond what any of us could have ever believed. It was incredible. And I soon realized that with all of our expansion, we were still considered a young church by everyone, that we had amassed quite a bit of debt. And honestly, in the transition, when I would talk to some people, like I remember going back and talking to Bill Edmonds, who still is a faithful person here still, he and Christine over in the country tent and Bill sort of helped me understand, honestly, we sort of have some unhealthy debt. And as he began to help me realize that, I decided, well, I'm gonna set some goals to eliminate the debt at our church. And I was doing the same thing in our family. I've always felt the way I would lead my family to have financial health would be similar to the way I would wanna lead the church. And so, I began to share with as many people and talk to the folks on our team about paying off our debt. And we began this long, long process of paying down millions of dollars in debt. And we watched God work over and over in some miraculous ways. And for the first time in a long time, I can report to you that our church is completely debt free. Now, so much of that credit goes to folks like Bill, our trustee board who are just incredible and honestly our financial director, Lora Fuller, has put in tons and tons of hours to make this happen. I mean, I watched this team work tirelessly and this wasn't one of those easy goals. It was years and years and years to see this accomplished. And now that our church is debt free, I mean, think about this, guys, there is tremendous opportunity to go after so many God-sized goals, to see our God accomplish things now that we could have never dreamed of. And I wanna be transparent with you as well. Being debt-free doesn't decrease the need for all of us to have generosity to the church, but it increases the opportunity for transformation in people and places. And you know what? Every person on our team and every person I've had the opportunity to share this with would say this, we give God all the glory. I mean, ultimately, He is the one who helped us accomplish an incredible goal. And again, it sort of goes back to that statement. You have to let your God determine the size of your goal. Well, I guess what I wanna say to you as your pastor, I mean somebody who loves you, I really do desire the best for your life and I want you to succeed in life. So this is what I would tell you, you young folks, I just wanna say dream great dreams for God. Set God-sized goals for your life and your family. And I want you to be used by God in ways that you never imagined. Here's the third thing. When we set goals in life, they actually keep us focused now. Now this is important. To keep you from wasting time and wasting money and damaging your reputation and running out of energy, I wanna encourage you to set some God-sized goals in your life because they keep you focused. And focus, if you talk to any of these folks who have had a focused, consistent life that actually left the kind of legacy you wanna leave with character, they will tell you, this is just sort of across the board, that focus is actually the key to an effective life. I mean, it's either these 50 things I dabble in or it's this one thing I do. And the more you focus your life, the more powerful, the more effective your life's gonna be. But if you spread it out and you do all kinds of things and you diffuse your life over a whole bunch of different things, you're not gonna make any impact at all. It's tempting, right? I mean, it's hard for a guy like me to say no 'cause there's so many incredible things that come our way, but you gotta get focused. And when you focus your life, I promise you, it's gonna be powerful. It's gonna be strong. It's gonna be one of those lives that can actually change the world. An example of this is light and we love light, especially after the Christmas season. You've probably been packing up some of those lights this week and all those kinds of things, but light, when it's diffused, it has no power at all. But when you focus light, I mean guys, it has enormous power, right? I mean, when you focus light all the way back from the boy scout days, it can start a fire. When you focus light, it becomes a laser. And today, with all the technology, laser can actually cut through steel. It can cut through your body and cut out a cancer when that light, when that laser is focused. Goals focus our life and the world in which we live is so full of distractions. Hopefully, that's something we can all agree on today. There's a lot of things out there to distract you. So you can spend your life or you can waste your life or you can invest your life. And if you're gonna invest your life, it's gotta be focused. The greatest use of life is to invest it in those things that are gonna outlast it. And we don't have time to do everything, but here's the good news. God doesn't expect you to do everything. Not everything that comes our way is even worth doing. But there are only a few things that God wants you to be about and focus on that are truly worth doing for the person He made you to be. And the key to being effective in life as a woman of God or as a man of God, is to do what matters most and just forget everything else. Goals focus our life. Let's go back to Paul in 1 Corinthians chapter nine, verse 26. He's talking about running here. And I'm not a runner, I can't really relate to it, but I can get what he's trying to say. He says, "I do not run like someone running aimlessly." In other words, when Paul ran and he was talking about the journey of his Christian faith, right? He wasn't out there just going everywhere. He wasn't being tossed back and forth. He had a goal. And I would just say, Paul is trying to help us understand life is short. I mean, it is a mist, it's like a vapor. So he says, "Hey guys, don't just waste your life." Paul said, "I'm not playing around here. When I run a race, I run it to win. I don't want my life to bring dishonor to God. So I stay focused and I run with a goal in mind." I believe this idea of a focused goal is truly the reason that when we look back at our church today, that our world mission program has been so effective. I mean, think about this, guys. If you're new to Highlands, we have a heart for the world. And we look back, we've been doing this over 20 years. Pastor Jimmy, our founders, all of our early key leaders, they all wanted to be a part of a church that was more than taking care of ourselves. But they all wanted to sort of be a great commission, a great commandment church. And man, that's been in our DNA for 20 years. And God has done incredible things. I mean, Highlands just decided early on in its history that we're gonna take the great commission seriously. That we want everybody to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ and we would devise a plan that would take the gospel to the entire world. And as many of you know, because so many of you love what God's been able to do through our church around the world, that the result of a focused goal like this has been incredible. We've been able to train over 400 international pastors. We brought them from their home country, brought them to this location here. We've trained them for a couple of weeks and then we've sent them back. And these 400 pastors, I mean, only God knows. We'll only know when we got to heaven, but we know that they have actually trained thousands and thousands of pastors all over the world in what we call the Global Glory of God. We call it the G3 Conference, the Global Glory of God for the global glory of God. G3 has been a heartbeat for us here at Highlands. And I wanna show you just a little picture of where we've been and all the places we've trained. I mean, it's been incredible what God's done. And I want you to hear from a person that we have in Ukraine, Pastor Vassal, that many of you have come to know and loved dearly. And our last meeting with our G3 guys, he went home and he gave us a little video that was such a gift to us about his last time with us. So I want you to look at this video with me today.
- G3 Global Glory of God Network. We traveled from different countries and different continents, leaders of leaders, people with many responsibilities and a heart devoted to God. We came to learn and share our own experience. Highland Fellowship welcomed us with open hearts and wonderful program. Experienced speakers shared their experience every day. We talked about purposeful life, leaders vision, leadership development, path, strategic planning, spiritual formation, discipleship and other important topics. We learned to analyze and make decisions. Every day, we saw a lot of food and treats. We visited the best restaurants and tasted food from different cultures. We had a lot of funs. Someone learns to play bowling and someone rejoiced at his success and victories. We visited the campuses and shared short greetings and again, restaurants. Some dishes were really very tasty. Christian theater where a professional choir sang for two hours. Someone was waiting for smoke and lights, but everything was much more serious. It was a time of worship. We talked a lot with each other and felt at home. A night of worship, a special time with smoke and lights. But not only that, it was an evening of God's presence and God's Word. Simple and powerful. We were introduced to the church and the pastor spoke very kind words about us and our ministries. There were a special moment every morning, one minute of devotion, a meeting with the person who invested in us. Thanksgiving day. Yes, we did have Thanksgiving one evening in the beautiful mountains with wonderful landscapes. We talked about what we were grateful for and we ate a special, delicious meal. There were special people who cared about us on the road, at home, in transportation, in various details of all our stay. We're especially grateful to them and leaders, great leaders who serve the people and have great visions. Our trip to Atlanta, it was a special event in a special format. These were special testimonies and special word of encouragement, meeting with friends who care and pray. We are different. We are from different countries, different cultures, but we are one, one body of Jesus Christ. We are called to fulfill His tasks. That's what the Glory of God Network is all about. And we want to say in sincere thank you in our language. Thank you for your service to God and to us.
- Every time I watch that, I think about just how much God has blessed these Global Glory of God conferences, been incredible. And when I hear them say thank you, gives us a little taste of what heaven's gonna be like. That would've never happened without a focused goal. Here's the last thing. Goals keep us going, don't they? I mean, they keep us moving. Goals sort of give us hope to endure. They give us hope to persist. And you've heard me say many, many times, when you're going through tough times, what do you do? Well, you just keep going. I mean, you don't stay in the tough times. You don't stay there and camp out. But when you're going through tough times, you just continue. Take one step in front of the other. God gives us the strength. And often, we perish when we don't have a goal that keeps us moving forward in our life. That's the reason we gotta have a goal beyond. The Bible says this, Jesus endured the cross because He looked forward to the goal and the glory that was set before Him. I mean, Jesus went through a tough time, but He knew He was becoming the ultimate sacrifice to redeem us to a Father who is perfect and sinless and He became our eternal sacrifice. He looked beyond the pain to the payoff and you need to do this too. The Bible says that God wants you to have hope. And if you don't have a goal in your life, you don't really have any reason to get out of bed in the morning, maybe except to eat. I mean, that's what I've been doing sometimes when I get discouraged. Well, I'm gonna get up and eat, but I don't have a goal to get me going. Well, I love what Job says and we all know the story of Job. Job in chapter six verse 11 says this, "I do not have the strength to endure." Have you ever felt like that? Well, why? He says, "I do not have a goal that encourages me to carry on." You gotta have a goal in your life to keep you going. When we have some long-term goals, then they help us overcome our short-term setbacks 'cause the truth is, we all gonna have setbacks. I mean, everybody blows it from time to time. We all make mistakes, everybody has failures. In fact, I think failure is the only way that we can actually succeed. You actually succeed in life by learning from your failures. You're not gonna succeed if you don't fail. And why is that? Well, because it's how we learn. It's how we learn what works and what doesn't work. So I'm just sort of taking it like this. I don't ever call it failure, I call it education. And you know what? I feel like I'm highly educated 'cause I've been really good at making some blunders and having a bunch of failures. But goals, they just sort of keep us going. So when you think about a brand new year, I've tried to share with you some goals that our church has set and we're gonna look at in the days ahead. And I wanna encourage you to set some goals for your personal life. They're really a spiritual responsibility. They keep you focused. Man, they keep us going and God wants us to have some goals. Now I know the question that you probably are asking. Well, alright, I hear you, but let's make it practical. As we finish up today, let's draw it back down to ourselves and let's ask this question. If I've decided I'm gonna set a goal, then what kind of goal do I need to set? And we can set all kinds of goals. I'm gonna give you a couple things. If you are willing to set a goal and I hope all of you are, then the first thing I would say, a great goal is this question, will it honor God if I accomplish this goal? Will this goal, when it's accomplished, will it honor God? And if it doesn't, then I would just say, why would you wanna set a goal that doesn't honor God? Any goal that causes you to trust him more, to depend on him more, to love him more, to be able to love people more, to serve him more, to serve others, to be more unselfish, those are God-honoring good goals. Paul says this in 2 Corinthians 5:9, we make it our goal to please Him. So I would just say the first thing, when you decide you're gonna set a goal, will it honor God? And then the second thing, will this goal cause me to depend on Him more? Will it cause me in order to accomplish the goal, will I actually have to depend on God more? And if you can answer those two questions with your goals in the yes, in the affirmative, then those are God-honoring goals, those are pleasing-to-God goals. I mean, if you have a goal that's so small, it doesn't require any faith and you can accomplish it on your own, then that's not a God-honoring goal. That's not a God-sized goal. Whatever is not of faith, you know what the Bible says? The Bible is pretty rough, it calls that sin. Notice here in Proverb 16:9, we plan the way we want to live, but only God makes us able to live it. So as we face a new year, I just hope you'll set some faith-stretching goals for you, for your future and then I wanna ask you to join us as we begin to see what God wants us as a church to embrace in 2023. It's gonna be an incredible year. Don't miss it. I want you to be a part of it. Let's pack these places out, continue to join us online and on TV. And I think God just has an amazing, amazing year for us this year. Hey, would you pray with me? Let's pray. God, thank you that you are a God who desires for us to have goals in our life. You desire for our church to have goals. And God, as we encounter a new year, then I pray that every one of us that have heard this message today, that we will begin setting some goals that would honor You if they were met and would require me to depend on You more. And Lord, just help me to understand, I can't do everything in life. My life has to be focused, that this is a spiritual responsibility as a child of Yours that you want me to have. And God, that when we do this, these goals would actually honor You and our life would honor You more. And so I pray, God, that you would just begin to speak to us, that we would spend some time over the next couple of days just praying to you and seeking you and reading Your Word. And Lord, just speak to us. Just share with us how You wanna focus our life in this next season. And Lord, I'm so grateful for our church that we can go into this new year debt-free and God, just bring us the opportunities You want us to chase. And Lord, help us as we move forward to be a place, God, of belonging, to be a people of truth and love and God, to be able to know that we are a church on purpose, that we have a purpose to serve You. Lord, we love you. We thank you for loving us. We pray, God, if there's one here that's never trusted You, that today would be the day as we start out a brand new year that you would ask Jesus to come into your heart, your life, forgive you of your sin, help you to know that you can know you can belong to His family. So simple that you just ask Him to come into your heart and life, to save you and surrender your life to Him. And hey, if you made that decision right now online, if you just click that little raised hand button, we wanna come alongside you. On TV, you got the email, I'd love to hear from you. And at one of our in-person locations, on your way out today, grab a staff person or volunteer and just say, "Hey, I decided to give my life to Jesus." That is awesome. We love you, Lord. Thank you for how You've blessed us. Continue to have Your hand of favor upon us. In Your name we pray, Amen.