What Should Be Your Single Goal?

Have you ever found that it is hard to multitask with excellence? It has been said that you can accomplish more by focusing on one thing at a time. As a Christian what should be our single goal in life?

Goal setting is popular especially at the beginning of each new year. Often we focus on so many goals that we never actually accomplish much.

Rarely a year goes by that I fail to achieve many of my goals. There are reasons that I could give you as to why I failed to achieve or in some cases try. But the successful goals were the ones that I was able to focus on singularly.

Growing up I have heard thousands of messages from preachers, heard the stories of scripture and faith, and have been challenged to live my life for Christ. If I was to start listing out all of the do’s, don’ts, principles to live by and other applications found in scripture I might go mad.

What Should Be Your Single Goal?

In the Old Testament alone there were over 600 commandments. That is an overwhelming list to follow. That is one reason why the Jews were trying to trick Jesus in Matthew 22 by asking Him which one was the greatest commandment.

So Jesus answered; Love God and Love Others.

³⁴ But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. ³⁵ And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. ³⁶ “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” ³⁷ And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. ³⁸ This is the great and first commandment. ³⁹ And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. ⁴⁰ On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

Jesus was able to boil down over 600 laws to 2 commandments. Maybe Jesus was on to something, make it simple and focus on a short list.

Religion does not have to be complicated. Throughout the ages of the world and Christianity, many people have tried to make going to heaven or following Christ a complicated matter.

• Do this
• Do that
• Keep all the holidays
• If you don’t do this long list of things you will not get to heaven
• etc…………..

The list could go on and on. Even as a follower of Christ we can get bogged down in all the things we should be doing as a Christian. It is impossible to keep all of them.

The Christian life would be much simpler if we could only focus on those two commandments that Jesus gave. To Love God and Love others.

Loving others hinges on us loving the first one. Love God.

Loving God should be our single goal. But the way it plays out in the everyday practice looks different for each person, and the root of it is to focus on God.

I love the Psalms, and David loved pursuing God as his single goal. Listen to these words.

Psalms 27:4

One thing have I asked of the Lord,
    that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
    all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord
    and to inquire in his temple.

One thing, One Single Goal: To Pursue Christ

“I want the presence of God Himself, or I don’t want anything at all to do with religion… I want all that God has, or I don’t want any.”—from The Counselor A.W. Tozer

Paul echoed these thoughts while he was in prison.

Philippians 3:10 ^“that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death”

I will never forget the summer before my freshman year of college. Up until that point, I had been a good Christian and knew my Bible better than most people. But that was because I grew up in a godly family and in a great church. My faith was never my own.

That summer, while I was on a mission trip, I decided to make Christ my priority and started pursuing Christ as my single goal. That summer changed my life.

Now I cannot say that Christ has always been that way. There were plenty of ups and downs and distractions. But keeping my eyes fixed on Christ the “Author of our faith” (Hebrews 12:1-2) stayed as my goal and changed my life.

Making the pursuit of Christ your single focus and goal is a decision you will never regret.

This new year will you make Christ your single goal?

How can your achieve your spiritual goals by pursuing Christ as your focus? Love to hear your thoughts and wisdom below.