Thomas J Parlette
“Only One Goal”
Philippians 3: 4b-14
10/4/20
I have never been a morning person. It has always been a challenge to roll out of bed and get going in the morning. Juliet and Thomson pop up out of bed every day at 5:00 or 5:30, no problem at all. But for me, it’s really easy to just roll over and go back to sleep. That’s why I always used to love staying in hotels and getting a wake up call.
One of the small luxuries that used to be available in most hotels was the personal wake-up call. Remember when the desk clerk would ask you when you checked in, “Would you like a wake-up call?” Then a real live person would call at the appointed time – “Good morning, Mr. Parlette, this is your wake-up.” And then you could decide if you wanted to go back to sleep or not. Alas, these days wake up calls are now assigned to computers and there is no one at the other end of the line. I know that many people use their phones as an alarm clock, so the idea of a wake-up call seems a little out-dated.
But they are not completely gone. There are still a few high-end hotels that will provide a wake-up call that is guaranteed to get you out of bed. One luxury hotel in Aruba makes an initial wake-up call, then sends an employee to knock on your door a few minutes later to ensure that you are indeed up. Another hotel sends a butler with coffee, tea and pastries to knock on your door. Works for me! At the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas, if you miss your wake- up call three times, the hotel manager will send a security guard to bang on your door until you answer. No chance you’re missing that kind of wake-up call!(1)
Speaking of ways to wake up, a mother once wrote in to a college’s online parent forum asking for ideas for really annoying wake-up songs to help her teen-age son get out of bed. Turns out that her son had a hard time getting out of bed, so he was missing a lot of his classes. So she had taken to creating music playlists of annoying or embarrassing songs to get her son out of bed, which she downloaded onto his phone to be his alarm songs. She had some success with songs like “Holly Jolly Christmas” and “Rock a Bye, Baby” and a couple of cheesy disco songs. But she was hoping to get some more suggestions from fellow parents. Everything from “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” by Wham to “In a Gadda Da Vida” by Iron Butterfly made the list.(2)
In today’s passage from Philippians, Paul refers to a different sort of wake-up call. He recalls the time he had a personal wake-up call to change the way he was living.
Paul, whose Hebrew name was Saul, was an Israelite, a descendent of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin. He had a respected family heritage. He was a student of the Law of Israel. He studied under Gamaliel, a widely known and respected Pharisee. Paul was educated, influential and respected. By all measures in his society, he was a success. And he had one singular goal in life – to protect the Hebrew law. That was his only goal.
Now we should note that successful people usually have worthwhile goals for their life. If you want to honor God with your life, if you want to make sure that you don’t waste the precious gifts God has given to you, then the best thing you can do is create some worthwhile goals for yourself.
Goal setting comes from the belief that your life has purpose. If your life were random and meaningless, then setting goals wouldn’t make sense. But if your life has purpose, if you have the opportunity to make an impact in your sphere of influence, then setting goals is the best way to do it. Worthwhile goals require vision, planning, discipline and sacrifice. Successful people have a vision for where they want to go and who they want to be, and they create a plan to get there.
Such was the case for a young man named Chad Williams. Williams was partying his way through community college when he experienced his personal wake-up call. He realized that his life was going nowhere and he needed some worthwhile goals for his life. So he chose the toughest goal he could think of – he decided to join the Navy SEALS.
As you probably know, the Navy SEALS are an elite special operations force. Their training is so rigorous, and their missions are so demanding, that only a tiny number of people who apply for SEAL training ever complete it.
Chad’s father put him touch with an active Navy SEAL, Scott Helvenston, who began mentoring him. In 2004, just before Chad entered the SEAL training program, Scott, his mentor, was captured in Fallujah, Iraq. He and three other SEALS were murdered, and their bodies were hung from a bridge over the Euphrates River. Their fate was broadcast by television news stations around the world.
Chad’s goal in life suddenly and dramatically changed. Chad was now focused on becoming the best Navy SEAL possible in order to honor his mentor, Scott Helvenston. Seems like a worthwhile goal. Chad trained hard, made it into the SEAL team, and served in missions all over the world. He had achieved a goal few people could even dream of. But after all his sacrifice, dedication and hard work, Chad still felt empty and restless. He began to wonder, had he invested all his energy and skills and time in this goal only to find that it wasn’t what he truly yearned for in life? That same thought had once occurred to Paul as well.
At one time, Paul proudly sought his own worthwhile goals. He describes himself as being zealous for God. “Zealous” isn’t a word we use much anymore. It means being “enthusiastic or passionate for a cause.” Paul wanted to honor God and his religious heritage as a member of the tribe of Benjamin. He demonstrated his commitment to these goals by carefully studying the Hebrew Law and by persecuting those Jews who didn’t strictly obey the Law – particularly this new sect of Jews who followed a rabbi they claimed had been raised from the dead and taken into heaven named Jesus.
In fact, his goal – which he was totally committed to – led him to go house to house in Jerusalem, hunting down followers of Jesus and dragging them off to jail. He even participated in an act of mob violence when a crowd of equally zealous Jews stoned to death a young preacher named Stephen. By his own standards, Paul was very successful in achieving his goals. But what does it mean if you are very successful at achieving your goals, and they turn out to be the wrong goals?
You may have heard the name Jon Krakauer before. Jon is a mountain climber and best-selling author of books about his climbing adventures. In his book Into Thin Air, he writes of the day in May, 1996 when he finally reached the summit of Mt. Everest. A number of his fellow climbers had died along the route. Krakauer wrote, “I understood on some dim, detached level that it was a spectacular sight. I’d been fantasizing about this moment, and the release of emotion that would accompany it, for many months. But now that I was finally here, standing on the summit of Mt. Everest, I just couldn’t summon the energy to care.”(3)
What do you do when you finally arrive at your goal, your mountaintop, and the thrill that you thought you would get from achieving your goal, isn’t all that great?
Sometimes our goals and our definition of success need to be pried out of our hands before we wake up to what’s really important. Many of you know what it’s like to have a wake-up call like that. You are consumed with thoughts of a promotion at work until you get the call that your child is in the emergency room. Your priorities get sorted out really quick at a time like that. And that’s what happened to Paul. While on the road to Damascus to arrest more followers of Jesus, Paul (who was going by his Hebrew name, Saul, at that time) was struck blind by a flash of light from heaven. And then he heard a voice – “Saul, why do you persecute me?” Saul spent three days in Damascus, blind and helpless, questioning the direction of his life. Suddenly his one and only goal in life was called into question. Now what?
From a young age, Stephen Sutton, a native of the United Kingdom, dreamed of becoming a doctor. But when he was diagnosed with bowel cancer at the age of 15, his dreams changed. Stephen started a blog on Facebook and wrote a bucket list of things he wanted to accomplish. Among those items were “learn to juggle,” “skydive for charity,” and “get my name in the Guinness Book of World Records.” As Stephen’s cancer progressed, he also added to his list the goal of raising 10,000 pounds for the Teenage Cancer Trust, a cancer charity in the UK. And he selected one more goal: to inspire someone else to become a doctor since he wouldn’t live to fulfill that dream.
Stephen’s blog inspired people around the world. He had the opportunity to speak at numerous places, and even met British Prime Minister David Cameron. He had an amazing impact on everyone who came into contact with him. Unfortunately, Stephen passed away in 2014 at the age of 19, but people continued to donate to the Teenage Cancer trust in his honor. As of 2017, 5 million pounds had been donated in memory of Stephen Sutton.(4)
It is amazing how one young man’s worthwhile goal not only had a positive effect on others, but it lives on after him. More than one young person was inspired to become a doctor because of Stephen Sutton. That’s the power of a truly worthwhile, God-honoring goal. And that brings us back to the story of Paul.
Paul had encountered Christ on the Damascus Road. After three days of blindness, Paul was healed through the intervention of a follower of Jesus named Ananias. And at that moment, Paul’s previous goals for his life began to look like rubbish, as Paul says.
“But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage…” Later he declares, “I want to know Christ – yes to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead…”
Later still, he sums up his new goal – to serve Jesus Christ, to be an imitator of Christ in all he did.
And he encourages the Philippians and us, to make that our goal as well. You were made to serve Jesus Christ. You were made to live out Jesus’ values and priorities. You were made to do good works that express the love and hope of Jesus Christ in the world. That is our only goal.
And that brings us back to the story of Chad Williams, our Navy SEAL who thought he would find fulfillment in a military career with one of the most elite special forces teams in the world.
One evening, Chad and his girlfriend were invited to a worship service. The Speaker, Greg Laurie, preached on a passage from the Old Testament about Naaman, a commander in the Syrian army who contracted leprosy.
You might remember the story – in order for God to heal him, the prophet Elisha told Naaman he had to remove all his armor and bathe himself in the Jordan River. Laurie made the point that Naaman had to humble himself, give up his symbols of strength and protection, and submit to God’s plan before he could be healed. Something in the story of Naaman spoke to Chad Williams deepest need, and he became a Christian that night. Today, Chad Williams is a best-selling author and speaker who shares his faith in Jesus all over the country.(5) In his estimation, being a Navy SEAL is great, but being a disciple of Jesus Christ is of far greater significance.
If you want to move forward in life, if you want to accomplish something significant in life, then you’ve got to set worthwhile goals for yourself. That’s what successful people do. And that’s great. But if you want to honor God with your life, if you want to make a positive impact for God, an impact that lives on after you are gone, then you need to have only one goal in life – serving Jesus Christ. It doesn’t mean you need to be a missionary in a foreign country or a Christian worker in the inner city. It does mean that you will seek to be the person God means for you to be wherever you do end up. It is what you were made for. It is where you will find your identity and purpose and peace. It is the one thing that will make the most difference in the world.
To imitate Christ – that is our only goal.
May God be praised. Amen.
1. Dynamic Preaching, Vol. XXXVI, No. 4, p3.
2. Ibid… p3.
3. Ibid… p5.
4. Ibid… p5-6.
5. Ibid… p6.
