- Well, hey, everybody. Happy New Year 2022, we made it, right? Now I know we're still dealing with some of the same stuff we've dealt with over the last couple of years. But here's what I want you to know, 2022 is gonna be an incredible for you, for our church, I'm believing God for great things. I want you to believe God for great things for your family, for your life, for your future, and for our church together as well. Now here's what I want you to know. I believe the church, God instituted it, he founded it to be supernatural. And I told you before, if we're not supernatural, we will easily go to be superficial. That's not what we want at Highlands, right? So I want out church to continue as we move into a new year to be a supernatural, you know, exuding the presence of God church, that when you come or you watch online, you know, you've been in the presence of God. What's the best way to do that? It is to get us as a family into his Word. That's the best way to do it. So what we're gonna do, we're gonna set a goal for you. I want us all as a church family to read the New Testament in 90 days. We're gonna finish it up right at Easter. Can you imagine? It's gonna be awesome, we're gonna celebrate that with all of you who do this with me. I'm gonna be doing it, family's gonna be doing it, I want you to do it, I want your family to do it. And as a church family, we're gonna set this goal and we're gonna go through this together and help you every step of the way. Here's what I wanna promise. If you read the New Testament, when you get finished, you won't be the same person. You're gonna be a better person. You're family's gonna be better, your marriage is gonna be better. Our church is gonna be better. So I just think it's a God-ordained goal for this time in which we live. God is calling us to do exceptional, exceeding, abundant things for his honor and glory. I want you to join with me at the end of service, they'll help you exactly understand how you on TV and all of our other locations online, wherever you are today, how you can join us in making this goal a reality for you. And you know, the truth is, many of you have emailed me over this pandemic season, you said, "I've never read through any parts of the Bible." So we didn't wanna do the whole Bible. You know, that's a lofty goal. But we wanted to actually challenge you in 90 days to go alongside you and read the New Testament together. It's gonna be awesome, I want you to be a part of it. Now, if I'm gonna challenge you to do that, I wanna talk to you about goals, not resolutions, I'm not a resolution guy. And if you have resolutions for a new year, it's awesome to go with it. But I'm more of a goal guy. Because I believe the opportunity to set goals for our life is really a biblical thing. So here's the question, here's the big question for the day that I want you to embrace with me, all right. Here it is. I want you to ask this question to yourself. Why are goals important in changing my life? Why are goals important in order to change my life? I wanna give you a few reasons, and then we'll go into some God-honoring goals. Here's the first one, because setting goals is a spiritual responsibility. Goal setting is spiritual thing, it truly is. You know, the Bible tells us Jesus set goals. Matter of fact, you'll learn when you read the New Testament together, the often what Jesus did was he announced a goal publicly for the phase of ministry he was in, and then for the phase of ministry that he saw himself doing in the future. And God just orchestrated that. Jesus sort of lived by goals within his life. You know, every person who walked with God in the entire Scripture, you can find, they are examples of being goal-directed. Let me give you one example. We could give you tons today, but let me give you one. The apostle Paul, right? And I love Paul and I love all the books that he's written to us in the New Testament. Notice what he says here in Philippians chapter three. Look with me in verse 12 through 15, this is what Paul says. "I know that I'm not yet what God wants me to be." Well, could we not all say, "That's true, that's so true." I know even at 60 years old, okay, I am not yet what I know God wants me to be. And I think if you're honest with yourself, we can all agree with Paul. You know, he's about my age when he writes this, so he's elderly as well. And he says, "I know that I'm not yet what God wants me to be." And then he goes on, he says, "I haven't reached that goal." All right, I love how he illustrates it here. But he says, "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," here it is again, my goal, but there's one thing I always do. I forget the past," that's a goal right there, isn't it? "And I strain 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 receive through Christ in the life above. All of you who are spiritually mature should think this same way, too." I think it goes without saying, Paul was goal-oriented, just like Jesus. So here's the thing, guys. If you don't have goals for your life, you know what you're actually doing? You're relinquishing control of your life to somebody else or to other things. If you don't have clear goals for your life, you've become a drifter. You're sort of coasting along through life. And we know whenever you're coasting, you're going downhill. That's the reason it's so important to set some goals for your life, because one, it is a spiritual responsibility. Here's the second thing. Goals are actually statements of faith. A lot of people think a goal, isn't that like a business thing? I mean, isn't that something we do down at the workplace? Isn't that sort of a secular thing? That's what athletes do, right? I'm not an athlete, I'm not a goal person. Actually, setting goals is a spiritual habit that all of us need to develop. Goals are actually statements of faith. In other words, if you're a believer in Jesus Christ, you set a goal, what you're actually saying is, I believe, and that's the faith part, I believe that God wants me to accomplish such and such by such and such a time. That's really, when you think about how, just think about our vision. We're in this vision that we're gonna finish up this year. Right, it's been a long-time vision. And we had goals that were set during that vision. We asked God to help us reach 33,333. And when we finalized the vision, our goals, our faith was too small. We're probably gonna hit over 100,000 people serving individually in our communities. It's just been a God thing. But we had faith and we had a goal, and had we not had that goal, I'm convinced, we wouldn't be able to celebrate all that God's done. A goal is a statement of faith. That's all it is. And that's what I believe God's gonna do in my life when I set a goal is just, I'm gonna believe God is gonna do this by such and such a time in my life. You know, goals aren't just statements of faith, they also stretch your faith. And the bigger your goal, the more your faith will be stretched and that always pleases God. The Bible says without faith, it's impossible to please God. I love what Paul says over in Romans 14, he says, "Whatsoever is not of faith is" what? He says it's sin. That's how important Paul saw this. So if I'm gonna go through life without any goals, the vast majority of us never set goals in our life. I'm gonna go through life without setting any goals, then you know what? That's not gonna take any risks on my part. If I don't take any risks, I don't need any faith for God to show up. And if I don't have any faith, I'm gonna be unfaithful and there's no way I can be pleasing to God. You see how important it is for you to have some goals in different areas of your life. Here's a goal-stretching verse. Notice what Paul says to the Ephesian church over in Ephesians three, look at verse 20. He says, "God can do anything," he can do anything. "Far more than you could ever imagine or guess or dare to request in your wildest dreams." Now, I'm a dreamer, you can ask Brenda. I've always been a dreamer. And she's a realist, so we really do need each other. But I'll dream great dreams for God, and I'll tell God those dreams. And I always think I hear God say in return, "Allen, think the greatest thing, the greatest dream that I could ever do in your life," and I think God says, "You know what, I can top that. Is that the best you got? I can beat that." So I've just determined to let the size of our God determine the size of our dreams here at Highlands. Man, we have a big God. There are two common mistakes that we often make when we set goals. Here they are. First of all, we set them too low, and secondly, we try to accomplish those goals too quickly, and then we get discouraged and we give up. So as your pastor, again, you're gonna hear me talk about this a lot, I'm urging you in the next 90 days, let's all set this goal, we're gonna do it together, we're gonna cheer each other on, of reading through the New Testament. And I think it's gonna be amazing what God will do in our life and what God's gonna do in the life of our church. Goals are statements of faith. Here's the third thing. Goals actually focus our energy, they focus our energy. Another one of the reasons why you need to set goals is it allows your life to get so much more focused. Goals keep us from wasting time, from wasting our money, from blowing our reputation, from just wasting our energy, that's what goals can do. They keep us focused. And that's really the name of the game, when we have all these different things that are fighting for our attention, you know, is how do we stay focused? Well, focus is truly the key to an effective life. It's not these 50 things I dabble in, it's this one thing I do, it's these few things that I focus on. And the more you focus your life, the more powerful your life is gonna be, the more effective your life's gonna be. But if you spread your life out and you diffuse it over a whole bunch of different things, you're probably not gonna make any impact at all. But if you focus your life, I promise, it's gonna be powerful, it's gonna be strong. That's how people who change the world do it. Man, they are focused, because we live in a world full of distractions. You can spend your life, you can waste your life, or you can focus your life. And the greatest use of a life is to focus it, to invest it on those things that are gonna outlast it. You don't have time to do everything. The good news is God doesn't want you to do everything. Everything's not worth doing. There are only a few things in our life that are worth doing. I love how Paul teaches the Corinthian church, and the church in Corinth caused him a few issues. You know, he felt like they were always struggling, always into these crazy things. So Paul teaches the Corinthians two books, you know they need two books. We'll find this as we read through the New Testament. Notice in First Corinthians nine, look at verse 26, he says this, he says, "I don't run without a goal." Now we don't know if Paul was a runner, most theologians don't think he was a marathon runner or anything like that. He's using it as an example. He says, "I fight like a boxer who is hitting something, not just the air." What's he trying to tell us here? He's saying, "I'm not playing around with my life. I'm not gonna waste my one and only life." So he says, "You gotta be goal-oriented, you gotta focus your life, and don't run around in circles, you know, don't just get so diffused that you've allowed your life to get into a thousand different things. But become focused in your life." So goal's a spiritual thing, it causes our faith to rise in our life, and it focuses our energy. Here's another thing. Number four, I think goals sort of keep us going. In this COVID area, my goals have kept be going, kept me on the right track. And they give me hope to keep moving, they give me hope to endure, they give me hope to persist. And the way that you do that is that you have a goal beyond whatever is currently right in front of you. I love what the Scripture says. This is what the Bible says. "Jesus endured the cross," okay, "because he looked forward to the goal and the glory that was set before him." In other words, Jesus persisted through the cross and all the things that went through this false arrest, the beatings, the torture, and he gives his life to pay for our sin on the cross, because he was looking forward to what his death on the cross was gonna accomplish. And sometimes in our life, we get that backward, don't we? We allow what we're currently going through to actually really hinder us from accomplishing what God wants us to do on the other side of that. Jesus looked beyond the pain to the payoff, and we need to do that, too. If you don't have any goals in your life, you don't really have any reason to get out of bed in the morning, do you? I mean, except maybe to eat, and most of us need to have a few goals around that. We probably don't need to eat as much. But Job said this over in Job chapter six verse 11, he said, "I do not have the strength to endure." Have you ever felt like that? I know many of you do, because you tell me every week, you message me, you let me know. I don't know if I'm gonna make it through the day. Well, why is that? Well, he goes on, he says, "I do not have a goal that encourages me to carry on." You gotta have a goal to keep going, here's why. Because when you have a long-term goal or you have a few long-term goals in your life, they keep you from being discouraged in your short-term setbacks. Because the truth is everybody has setbacks, everybody blows it, we all make mistakes, everybody has failures. In fact, I believe that you can't succeed in life without failing. Why is that? Because that's how you learn what works and what doesn't work. So don't ever call it a failure, you know, just call it an education. And in this case, I am highly educated. I mean, I've failed so many times, it's crazy. And you may feel like the same way in your life. Have some long-term goals that keep you from getting discouraged and help you overcome those short-term setbacks. And that's why we're gonna do this together in 90 days. That's our long-term goal. Here's the deal. When you decide you're gonna read through the New Testament, I promise you this, the enemy, he hates Russ to spend time in the Word of God. So that first week or two that you're trying to get five, ten minutes to stay caught up with your reading, the enemy's gonna, he's gonna distract you in every way possible, 'cause he knows if he can get you in those early days, he's got you. Well, they're already in John and I'm still on Matthew chapter one. I've blown it, I've missed out again. Nope, don't do that, all right. You gonna have some short-term setbacks as we go through the New Testament. But just get caught back up. You know, get that YouVersion app or whatever it takes, if it'll read it to you as you're going down the road, you know, so you can stay right on target. Because I'm promising, even in my own life, I've done this before so many times, there's gonna be a few days I'm gonna miss out or whatever, things happen. But you're gonna have a few failures, you're gonna have a few short-term setbacks. Just stay focused on the end goal. Goal setting, so important in our life. Here's the fifth thing I think about goals. Did you know that goals actually build our character? They truly do, goals build our character. Now drifting doesn't build your character, but goals build your character. Listen friends, the greatest benefit to your life over the goal that you're gonna set in the next 90 days as we read through the New Testament, will be what happens inside you while you're moving forward toward the goal you set. You're just gonna see some amazing things that begin to happen in your character and who you are. You're gonna look at Jesus, you're gonna see how he lived, and you're gonna think, "You know what, I'm not like that," and you're gonna make some changes that's really gonna help you. Because God is far more interested in your character than he is in your accomplishments. He's far more interested in who you are and who you become than he is in what you do and what you accomplish. So here's the idea. While I'm working on the goal of reading through the New Testament, you know what, God's working on me. Does that make sense? That's really how he does it. And that's what God wants to do in your life. God helps us to build our character and our character, that's what's gonna last, it is. That's why Paul says back to Philippians chapter three, look at verse 12, he says, "I keep striving, I keep striving toward the goal," I keep grinding, you know, Paul was gritty. And sometimes to meet God-ordained goals, you gotta grind a little bit, you gotta strive. It means it takes some energy, it takes some effort, it's intentional, it takes purpose to reach your goal. So God says, "While you're doing that, while you're working on the goal," he's building his character in you. And the thing about the Lord is you'll never become the man or the woman that God intends for you to be unless you become intentional about becoming who God wants you to be. Goals build our character. One last thing, if I haven't convinced you yet, here's one other thing, good goals will be rewarded. Good goals will be rewarded. If you have good goals, there's gonna be two reasons that you get rewarded. You're gonna be rewarded here on earth if your goals are good, by people. And if your goals are good, you're gonna be rewarded in heaven by God. Now let's look at the Scripture on this, Proverbs 11:27 says this, "If your goals are good, you'll be respected." All of us wanna be respected. I wanna be respected, I'm sure you wanna be respected, you wanna have character, you wanna be a person of integrity. Well, here's the truth. If your goals are good, you're gonna earn that respect from other people and respect and integrity, those things are earned, you don't get that by a title, you know, you don't become a new position. All of a sudden you got integrity and character and respect. No, you have to earn that. So you earn those by setting goals that are good. But the real reward is not by people here, it's gonna come in eternity, when we have good goals. Notice what Paul says again to the Corinth church in First Corinthians nine verse 25. Listen to what he says. "All athletes practice strict self-control." They eat right, they sleep right, they work out, they exercise. You may have saw this thing, I saw the interview with Tom Brady, and yeah, the guy's incredible, at Thanksgiving. And Brady said this. He said, "Well." They said, "What are you gonna have for Thanksgiving dinner?" He said, "Today is the one meal all year, I just let it go, and I eat what I wanna eat." And I'm like, "Wow, no wonder that dude's a specimen of fitness, you know?" One meal all year, he's undisciplined in. Every other meal, every other meal all year, he says, "I'm disciplined on that." Well, I'm not Tom Brady, obviously, as you can tell. But he says, "All these athletes practice self-control." He says, "They do it to win a prize," Super Bowl, whatever, "that one day is gonna fade away." But we, God's children, we set godly goals, good goals, "we do it for an eternal prize." So Paul says, I run straight to the goal with purpose in every step. Paul set a goal with purpose for eternity in mind. And when we set a goal like we're doing as a church family, we're gonna be rewarded for being a student of God's Word. That's an awesome goal. So let me close, let me wrap this up and let me just get you to think, and what kind of goal does God bless? Now we sort of know that goals are the way we can change our life, we can build our character, we can build our faith, it's a spiritual thing. What kind of goals, as we think about a new year, can God bless? Well, not every goal is a goal that God's gonna bless, right? I mean, we know that. So how do I know the kind of goal that God's gonna bless? I'm give you three questions to ask when you think about setting goals. Here's the first one. Will this goal, if I set it, will it honor God? Will it give God honor? That's how you know it's a good goal. The first question to ask, will this goal honor God? If I fulfill this goal, will it bring glory and honor to God? Any goal that causes you to trust him more, to depend on him more, to love him more, that will cause you to love other people more, that will cause you to serve God and serve your church and serve the community and serve others, any goal that's unselfish, I wanna tell you, that's a good goal, it's gonna honor God. So you have to ask, "If I set this goal, is it gonna honor God if I accomplish it?" Again, Paul goes to the Corinthian church in First Corinthians five and verse nine, or Second Corinthians, this is what he says. "We make it our goal to please him." It's our goal to please him. Everything we do, Paul says, what we want is to please God. So the first question we learn of God, here's the second question. Is it motivated by love? If I set this goal, is it motivated by love? You really need to ask this, because we get this mixed up. You can set goals even for your finances, and your health and your relationships, but are those goals motivated by love? Because it's so easy to set goals, because we're influenced by the secular society in which we live, and our goals can be based on envy or greed or guilt or grudges. I mean, God's not gonna honor a goal that's built on worry and fear and anxiety. He's not gonna honor a goal that's motivated by materialism, I'm getting all I can get, or a big ego or pride. But when you set a goal out of love, and you base that God, I wanna do this because I love you and I wanna love other people more, God's gonna honor that goal every time, every time. Because life is all about learning how to love God and other people. There's this Scripture, right, back to the Corinth church in First Corinthians 16:14, Paul says, "Everything you do must be done with love," everything, that's a pretty high qualifier. First Corinthians 14:1, "Let love be your highest goal." It should be a goal in your life. This was the life that Jesus lived. And the more we set our goals to honor God and to love him and other people, those are good goals. Here's one other question. Will it require me to depend on God more? Will this goal, if I set it, will it require me to depend on God? I love back in Hebrews chapter 11 verse six, incredible chapter, of course. And the writer of Hebrews says, again, "Without faith it's impossible to please God," it's just impossible. So if you don't have a goal that requires faith, it's really not a pleasing-to-God goal. I mean, I understand would I challenge you to read through the New Testament, here's the deal, most of you have never done that. Now you've read bits and pieces and different things, and you think, "Oh, yeah, I really wanna do it, I wanna do it, I'm gonna sign up, I'm gonna do it." I want you to do it, 'cause it's gonna require you to depend on God more, maybe than you ever have in your life. I just want you to do something that requires you to honor God, it's gonna honor God if you do it, you know, it's gonna build your faith, it's gonna strengthen your character, and it's gonna cause you to depend on him more. And when you depend on God more, you know what happens? You love him more and you love other people more. That's what we're gonna do as a church family in these next 90 days. You know, when I think about, when I really started thinking about, golly, we're in this season of uncertainty, we don't know what the future holds. We do know who holds the future, that's God. This book, the Bible, is God's owners manual for our life. So if I can understand the book that God's written to me, this is like every day, I'ma have a conversation with God. And there's so many things as I understand God's Word, that all of a sudden helps me in my Christian journey. And it really helps me lose my skepticism, because so much of my skepticism is on things that the world system teaches me. And yet, what I see in God's Word, this is what God's Word says. He's already answered these questions. I don't have to even go down that path, I don't have to go down that rabbit hole, I just know that from a study of the Word of God. And when you get God's word into your mind and your heart and your life, and man, when you start reading God's Word and studying it and memorizing it and having some time to meditate it, the more successful, the more fulfilled, the more strong you're gonna be in your daily life and in the day in which we live, we need this, we need it. Because if all you do is come to church and you sit in your spectator seat, and you hear me talk 20 or 30 minutes or whoever the speaker is that day, and you go home and you check it off your list, this is what I promise you, 90 days is gonna come and Easter's gonna come, you're not gonna be different. You're gonna struggling with the same junk you're struggling with right now, because it's not about just coming and sitting, it's coming about getting engaged, getting out of that consumer seat and getting in the family, engaging into what the church is calling you to do and to gather as a family. We're gonna go through and we're gonna do what God calls us to do. And when we do that, that's how we stay being a supernatural, Holy Spirit filled church on mission for God. Now, as I close, I just wanna say that so many of our global partners are gonna go on this journey with us. So not only are we doing this here in our own locations in Bristol and Abingdon and Marion and Bluefield, online and on TV, several of our regional churches are gonna go through the New Testament with us. And here's the deal. We have folks in South Africa with Pastor Tony's network and the Ivory Coast with Pastor George's. In the Middle East we have Free Wahi's network, several of our international pastors in the Middle East, they're actually gonna go through reading the New Testament with us. It's pretty incredible what God's doing. And our friends in Pakistan as well, Pastor Joel and Pastor Jonathan, they're excited that we here at Highlands are cheering them on all over the world to get into God's Word, read the New Testament together, and see what God's gonna do. So as we kick off a new year, let's make that one of our goals in our life. Would you pray with me? God, thank you so much for your Word. It's incredible. I've spent so many years reading and studying, and yet every day when I get into your Word, you still reveal something to me new that I've never seen before. And God, there's always new promises and new truths. And God, you have stood by your Word when the enemy and all the powers of hell have tried to extinguish and get rid of the Bible all over the globe, and yet it is still the most read, circulated, bought book in the entire world. This is your word to us, Father. And I pray as we as a family join together, set a goal to read through the New Testament in the next 90 days, you'll change us. You'll change our families, you'll make our marriages more healthy. And God, you'll change our church and our faith will increase. And God, not only here, but in our regional network and in our global network, God move among every person who decides I'm gonna get into your Word, I'm gonna meditate on it, I'm gonna study it, I'm gonna go forward as a student of the Word of God. Now, you may be here today as we start a new year and you've never trusted in Jesus Christ. Well, let me just tell you. I still encourage you to read through with us, because the Scripture says, and you'll find this out, that you're actually blinded by the enemy who wants to see you destroyed and go to hell when you die. But you'll find as you read God's Word, that Jesus Christ loved you so much that he left heaven and he died on a cross to pay for your sin, so you could escape the judgment of your sin. And when you die, and eventually you will, you can be in the presence of God forever and ever. You may wanna make that decision today. If you do, just say, "Hey, I've made mistakes. Jesus, I ask you to come into my life, ask you to forgive me. And Lord as now I journey with you in these next 90 days, just become real in every facet in my life. Love me, help to love you." And man, if you made a decision like that, let us know, 'cause we believe God wants to do a great work in and through you. Lord, thank you so much for loving us. Thank you for these books that you've written to us so that we could know you more. And our character and our integrity and our respect level is only gonna thrive when we get into your Word. Have your willing way now, in Jesus' name, amen.