Stop Chasing Your Headlights

As we move into the finals months of 2024, a lot of us are going to be evaluating our year and the impact we have made or not made compared to the goals we set at the beginning of the year. We may also be evaluating others or even our whole church or organization. That means we are likely going to be facing some stress and disappointment. Most of us over-estimate what we can do in a single year: we set goals that inspire us, but then find those same goals leave us feeling like failures when they are only partially realized.  So even if we have had a great year in many ways, we may end up discouraged at what didn’t happen.

Others of us may have feared this sense of failure and set low goals in a limited vision. We may be able to check a lot of boxes, but only because we were too afraid to dream big or expect much. Evaluations then feel hollow. We hit our goals, but they don’t mean much.

In addition, we likely experienced some serendipities as we pursued our goals. God often gives us a vision of a good outcome that we can imagine in order to get us moving us toward a greater good we could not have imagined until we were on the way. (See this previous blog for more). Our best victory this year may not have been in our vision or listed among our goals. If we only measure progress toward goals we set a year ago, we may miss our best reason to praise God and give thanks and end up feeling like failures or hallow successes when we had a great year.

Vision and goals are like headlights. They help you see where to drive. However, like headlights, they are always in out in front of us, and as we make progress, things are constantly changing before us. What we could see at one point way back a year ago no longer makes sense where we are now. Chasing our headlights only leads to frustration. They always show us something that is beyond us.

One piece of wisdom I picked up this year was to use visions and goals to inspire us to move and act in a good direction, but don’t use them to evaluate how far you have come. That is a recipe for frustration and discouragement. You could not see the terrain well enough in January to plan your whole year. You certainly could not see five years ahead. God doesn’t give us that kind of ability. So, don’t measure yourself by a limited description of what you saw in the past.

When you are assessing your work, measure how far you have come from some starting place or mile marker. If we want to measure progress, we should compare where we were at some point in the past and note the distance.  How far have we come? What good has been done? What impact have we had on others? How has God worked in us and through us?

I’m all for casting visions and setting goals. We all need them. But they are not very helpful in assessment. To treat goals as if they are accurate measuring sticks of our progress requires we have an idolatrous capacity for foresight that only God possess. Throughout scripture, God casts visions of a glorious end toward which he is leading his people. But, at no point in scripture do God’s people realize those visions in their daily experience. And, when God measures his people, he talks about how far he has led them. He calls on his people to remember where they were when he found them and called them. He entreats them to remember all he did for them along the way. That kind of assessment leads to thanksgiving and worship. It’s still an expression of God’s wisdom for us today.