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Today on the podcast, we are focusing on accomplishing our dreams and goals. Our habits can help our lives feel more in control, but by themselves, they do not necessarily get us closer in the direction of our dreams. How do we move forward? Today, we are going to be talking about the types of dreams and goals you can set for yourselves and why they are so important for furthering God’s kingdom. This is part of our series on getting things done from a biblical perspective. Be sure to check out our shop for resources related to planning.

S2E15 – What You Need to Know about the Christian Creeds – A More Beautiful Life Collective Podcast

In this episode, we are talking about the high-church confessional documents and why you should engage with them. No matter what denomination you belong to, these confessional texts – like Christian creeds, confessions of faith, catechisms, and liturgies – have been incredibly influential in the history of the Church. We need to wrestle with what they say and determine how it fits in with our own personal statement of faith. Today, we are going to talk about why you should read these texts, and then, turn our focus to the Christian creeds in particular. Read more on the blog: https://amorebeautifullifecollective.com/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-christian-creeds/ Get a PDF copy of the Christian Creeds here: https://a-more-beautiful-life-collective.kit.com/d080819cc1 Get the Doctrine and Theology Cheat Sheet Here: https://a-more-beautiful-life-collective.ck.page/bd897d28d0 Get a list of the names of God here: https://a-more-beautiful-life-collective.ck.page/43d2d5cf6b Get a copy of our personal statement of faith creation guide here: https://amorebeautifullifecollective.com/product/we-believe-your-personal-statement-of-faith-workbook-pdf-download/ Get “Building Our Foundations: 10 Week Study” here: https://amorebeautifullifecollective.com/product/building-our-foundations-11-week-systematic-theology-book-bible-study/ Visit our Shop to get a copy of any of the resources mentioned in this episode: I’m your host, Cayce Fletcher, and you can learn a little bit more about me here. While you’re here, would you consider leaving a comment, rating, or review? You can find our podcast, A More Beautiful Life Collective Podcast, wherever you listen to podcasts. Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or watch on YouTube. Subscribe to the blog for access to our latest content and some freebies. I love creating and sharing resources with you. You can find all of our resources at A More Beautiful Life Collective Shop. Keep creating a life you love, and cultivating your heart for God.

Do you feel like you are missing out on your dreams and goals?

Hey everyone, I’m Cayce Fletcher. Welcome to Season 1 Episode 21 of A More Beautiful Life Collective Podcast. Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast to never miss an episode and leave a rating and review to help others find the show. You can also subscribe to YouTube to access more video content there. If you check out the blog, you’ll find A More Beautiful Life Collective Shop! We have all sorts of resources related to planning, goal-setting, and more so be sure to check that out! Now onto the episode.

As a child, I can remember brainstorming my bucket list for my life. I wanted to travel, read lots of books, learn about everything, and have lots of animals. I was the kid who bounced around from hobby to hobby, sport to sport (which meant I knew a lot about a lot of different things but was not really a master of anything). When we are young, we dream big dreams. It doesn’t matter that we know nothing about what we are hoping to accomplish. We dream it so that we believe that we can do it.

What were some of the dreams and goals that you had as a child, a teenager, or a young adult?

Some things that I dreamed of doing – like a short-term mission trip to Africa – never came about. But, other dreams did. When I was a sophomore in college, a few friends and I planned a trip to visit lots of churches in the conference of my denomination. We saw the whole country, led worship services, and met so many amazing people. Looking back on that, I still can’t really believe that we did that thing. But, that trip was a blessing for others, and it was also an incredible blessing for me. I saw the faithfulness of God on that trip – in financial blessings and in the way that everything worked out for his glory. When I think about new dreams, I always look back on what God accomplished through that trip and it gives me confidence and courage to act in faith for him today.

I read a book once that described the way that the circus used to tame elephants. As a baby elephant, they would tie a rope around their leg. As the elephant grew, they would take the rope off, but the elephant would never leave because it thought it was still tied up.

How often is this the case with you? What dreams were you told were too big, too stupid, too audacious, too silly? And, so you never even tried to do them?

Once we reach the age in life where we have families and jobs, it’s so hard to get the ball rolling again. If you were told as a teenager and college student that you could not do that thing, you grow up into a whole life feeling like you are unable to reach for the dreams and goals God has placed on your heart.

So this is my encouragement to you. We were made for more than putting our heads down and going through the motions of our everyday lives, the vibrant colors of our dreams and goals faded into the gray of monotony and drudgery.

We were made for the meaningful struggle of working for the good of God’s kingdom.

What types of goals should we be planning for?

On the podcast, we’ve talked a lot about creating habits to accomplish the basic tasks of everyday life. Habits help us to automate many goals in our lives by helping us move forward. I’ll talk more about this distinction in the next podcast, but I think it’s important to note here.

Habits help your life to get under control because you are exercising your self-control to accomplish necessary daily tasks. You need to wash your dishes, do the laundry, have a quiet time with God, move your body, and talk to your kids every day to have a healthy, balanced life. When you first start to do any one of these things, it can seem like a huge project. You may have to develop systems, practice habits, and declutter your schedule and your home to accomplish these things. But, after a while, these habits become second nature.

Some of your dreams and goals may be to create these habits, but not all of them. Some of our dreams and goals should be to accomplish our projects. These projects are things that you’ve always dreamed of doing but you haven’t been able to do them yet. Our habits help our lives to feel in control, while our projects move us forward in the direction of our dreams and goals.

There’s a quote that I love that says, “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you could land among the stars.” That’s not exactly accurate, but it gets at a central truth in life. If you fail to plan, plan to fail. If you fail to plan, you won’t have any goals to reach. And, I find that we will end up only rising to the level of our goals. So, if you have that big, hairy, audacious dream for God, go for it! Even if you don’t actually meet those dreams and goals, you will be doing more for God than if you just keep your head down and go through the motions of your days without any intentions.

So yes, this year, some of your dreams and goals could be about establishing a habit. I’ve mentioned that I want to start to incorporate more movement into my days. That’s a habit – not a project. But, I want to encourage you to dream big about other one-time projects that could accomplish big things for God if you work at it.

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What are some dreams and goals you can plan for now?

In our lifehacking episode, we discussed how to create habits to match your goals and then review them regularly to figure out the optimal design for your daily behavior. This is a great way to design the habits that help to get your life under control.

But, what about those big dreams? What are some of those goals you could plan for now?

These goals are generally bigger and require more time, research, and personal investment to accomplish. But, these goals will get you closer and closer to a life that you love and that is impacting the world in a big way for God.

Dreams and Goals Ideas:

Writing a book
Starting a podcast, blog, or YouTube channel
Planting a garden (for vegetables or flowers)
Getting livestock
Beekeeping
Creating your own personal items, like candles, soap, etc.
Learning a trade (cabinetry, mechanic, electrician)
Teaching a class at your church
Starting a new ministry at your church (or taking over an existing one)
Inviting people into your home for a Bible Study
Going on a mission trip
Open a food bank
Start a community garden
Do a community meal or host a soup kitchen
Sponsor a Compassion child or participate in organizations that give to those in need
Traveling internationally
Visiting all the State Parks in your area
Visiting all the National Parks
Traveling to all 50 states
Buying a camper
Building a new house
Changing careers
Taking courses online or at a local college
Getting a degree (or finishing your degree)
Starting a ‘side-hustle’ (by blogging, babysitting, or creating a product)
Starting a family
Learning about your ancestry
Writing a biography or memoir (or the story of someone in your family)
Decluttering your home
Running a 5k (or 10k, half marathon, or marathon) or host a 5k at your local church or school
Joining a sports team for a season (or creating a sports team at your church)
Homeschool your kids
Do the 1,000 hours outside challenge

As you look through these ideas, you can see that many are big life changes. They will necessarily alter your life, and they involve risk. They can be scary, but that is why the pay-offs for doing these things are so big. This list is also pretty general, but what you would need to do is take an idea and then tailor it to your specific context.

In the case of my trip around the country, it started with an idea to do a trip to encourage churches, and then the idea grew into what it was as opportunities arose. This point is crucial. All too often we start an idea (like Run a 5k) and then we say we have to do one thing or else. We don’t allow ourselves to dream about doing something better. You may start with an idea to run a 5k, and then realize that you want to help others do the same. That could turn into hosting a 5k at your church with a 5k training group leading up to it. Or that could turn into being a mentor for girls on the run at a local school. Or it could turn into a regular walk and talk with some ladies at your church that builds connections.

The point is if you are faithful in saying that you want to move forward in your dreams and goals by doing the next right thing, you will see growth and maybe some amazing things happen. Your dreams and goals could flop and nothing else happen. Or they could grow and transform beyond your wildest dreams.

A couple of examples:

At the Floret Family farm, the owners decided to plant a few flowers for their family and friends. A few people asked to buy flowers after that first year, which has led to a business, several books, and a chance to spread the love of growing flowers to the world. It all started with a simple idea, and it has grown.
Sean Killingsworth wanted to provide a place on his college campus where people wouldn’t feel pressured to always be on their phones. He wanted a space where phones wouldn’t come in between human connections. So he started the Reconnect Movement which has spread across the country and is helping to fight against technology addiction in college campuses.
Jill Winger wanted to have a small farm with old-fashioned practices on the prairie of Wyoming. Little did she know that would turn into a thriving blog, a book deal, and an opportunity to open up her own restaurant in her little town.

There are so many more people I could mention – really too many to count – that have chosen dreams and goals for themselves, acted on those dreams and goals, and those dreams and goals have multiplied abundantly more than they could ever imagine. It’s not a formula that you can follow or a promise for your life. Instead, it’s just an encouragement that it could happen. If you choose to act on something and then consistently work at it, you too could start to accomplish your dreams and have those dreams multiplied.

Henry David Thoreau once said, “I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”

So this is my encouragement to you today to advance in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined. Create a life you love.

Visit A More Beautiful Life Collective Shop for bible studies, planners, and other resources.

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The Tale of Elisabeth Elliot

I want to leave you with the story of Elisabeth Elliot, author and speaker, who lived an exceptional life and accomplished so much for God. When we talk about accomplishing our dreams and goals, we can often have a romanticized view of it. We imagine that we write down the goal we want to accomplish and then we wake up the next day (or week or year) with that thing done and everyone giving us a pat on the back for it. Really, accomplishing our goals can be difficult, tedious work. We labor for those goals.

I imagine how Paul the Apostle must have felt. He was given this picture of going out into the world and winning over the Roman Empire for God. And if we look at Paul’s life, we can be in awe of how much work he accomplished for God’s kingdom. He accomplished that vision of going into the ‘end of the Earth’ and winning souls. But, in the in-between – when the real work was being done – Paul toiled for the kingdom. He labored for it. That work involved long letters, stonings, beating, jail time, endless conversations, tentmaking, and resolving disputes. He had to argue for his authority on what he was saying and fight against false teachers within the church. Paul accomplished his wildest dreams, but he had to work for them. He had to do hard things.

Elisabeth Elliot also had to do difficult things. In many ways, I look at her life and think that I would have been crushed under the weight of what she dealt with (and I have also dealt with loss and difficult things myself). Born in 1926, Elliot had a dream to go and work in the mission field. After a long road, she married Jim Elliot and left to evangelize to a violent remote tribe in Ecuador in 1956. While attempting to make contact, Jim Elliot and several other missionaries were attacked and murdered by the tribespeople. Elisabeth had to suffer the loss while also taking care of her 10-month-old daughter.

If this happened to me, I know that I would have left that missionary life, even if it was my dream, my calling. But, Elisabeth didn’t. Instead, she stayed and continued to evangelize to those people who murdered her husband, her child’s father. And, eventually, she won those souls for Christ. Throughout her life, she wrote several books, taught at a theological seminary, and hosted a Christian radio show. She became a mentor to so many people on what it meant to be a godly woman who served her Lord fiercely.

She wrote the following in one of her papers – you can find a full pdf of this on the blog:

“Do the Next Thing” by Elisabeth Elliot

“When I went back to my jungle station after the death of my first husband, Jim Elliot, I was faced with many confusions and uncertainties. I had a good many new roles, besides that of being a single parent and a widow. I was alone on a jungle station that Jim and I had manned together. I had to learn to do all kinds of things, which I was not trained or prepared in any way to do. It was a great help to me simply to do the next thing.

Have you had the experience of feeling as if you’ve got far too many burdens to bear, far too many people to take care of, far too many things on your list to do? You just can’t possibly do it, and you get in a panic and you just want to sit down and collapse in a pile and feel sorry for yourself.

Well, I’ve felt that way a good many times in my life, and I go back over and over again to an old Saxon legend, which I’m told is carved in an old English parsonage somewhere by the sea. I don’t know where this is. But this is a poem which was written about that legend.

The poem says, “Do it immediately, do it with prayer, do it reliantly, casting all care. Do it with reverence, tracing His hand who placed it before thee with earnest command. Stayed on omnipotence, safe ‘neath His wing, leave all resultings, do the next thing.” That is a wonderfully saving truth. Just do the next thing.

So I went back to my station, took my ten-month-old baby, tried to take each duty quietly as the will of God for the moment. One of the very first duties that faced me was what in the world I was going to do about the church. We had 50 newly baptized believers, Christians, who a year before had not been Christians. Jim Elliot had been teaching them daily and preaching on Sundays. Jim Elliot was not there anymore. There was no other male missionary

You can imagine how tempted I was to just plunk myself down and say, “There is no way I can do this.” I wanted to sink into despair and helplessness. Then I remembered that old Saxon legend, “Do the next thing.”

I remembered a verse that God had given to me before I went to Ecuador in Isaiah 50:7: “The Lord God will help me; therefore, shall I not be confounded. Therefore, have I set my face like a flint and I know that I shall not be ashamed.”

What is the next thing for you to do? Small duties, perhaps? Jobs that nobody will notice as long as you do them? A dirty job that you would get out of if you could have your own preferences? Are you asked to take some great responsibility, which you really don’t feel qualified to do? You don’t have to do the whole thing right this minute, do you? I can tell you one thing that you do have to do right this minute. It’s the one thing that is required of all of us every minute of every day. Trust in the living God.

Now what is the next thing? Well, perhaps it’s to get yourself organized. Maybe you need to clean off your desk, if you have a desk job that needs to be done. Maybe you need to clean out your kitchen drawers, if you’re going to do your kitchen work more efficiently. Maybe you need to organize the children’s clothes.

Do the next thing. Don’t sit down and think of all the things you have to do. That will kill you. It’s overwhelming. It’s daunting if you think of all the things that are involved in a task. Just pick up the next thing.”

When we think about our wildest dreams, we tend to feel overwhelmed and maybe a little lost. We can feel like we will only face rejection and difficulties if we move ‘’confidently in the direction of our dreams.” However, we are not asked to work out everything needed to accomplish those dreams. We are not even asked to have an idea of the extent to which those dreams could be achieved.

All we are asked to do is the next thing. We are only asked to act in obedience. God will work out the rest.

I encourage you to do the next thing to move confidently in the direction of your dream. What can you accomplish for God with your life?

I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of A More Beautiful Life Collective Podcast. If you haven’t yet, please leave a rating and review wherever you listen to podcasts to help others find the show. While you are there you can like and subscribe so that you never miss an episode. Don’t forget to check out the blog for more encouragement and resources on how to create a life you love and cultivate your heart for God. I’m Cayce Fletcher, and I’ll see you next week.

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