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As volitional beings, we are free to choose both the goals we pursue and the behaviors that pursue those goals. Reflect on the relationship between chosen goals and chosen behaviors. Make sure you express a clear understanding of each.
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Most peoples goals including myself are to be liked, feel important, be needed, have a good job, nice house, good marriage, respectable kids, ect.
if being liked, feeling important, being needed is a central goal then the persons behavior to attempt to reach such goal is to became a people pleaser. Saying and doing things only for the satisfaction of positive reactions from those around you. But if these behaviors do not result in what we want them to, them we become insecure and have self hatred for ourselves. feel like we are not good enough to be liked or loved, not important, not needed.
if its having nice things and a “perfect” family life is our central goal, we will slave away at keeping the house clean and taking pride in buying new things. become very controlling with your husband and kids. but when this fails, because nothing in life is perfect and materialistic things will not satisfy for long. we get depressed and angry.I am guilty of all of this, and i only came to understand it like this completely by doing this assignment. So I am thankful for this discussion.
As glorifying God as a central goal, all these other things aren’t important, because Gods will for my life is so much bigger than these short lived, materialistic and worldly things.
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When I see areas of life that scare me, I can seek to control or avoid those pieces of living. I can set goals to never get in those situations. Likewise when I have great experiences that make me feel alive, I will set goals to re-experience those pleasant feelings. I will behave in ways that I calculate will best get me to those goals. That behavior, because it is based on a faulty assumption of what will harm me or give me life, will not steer me correctly. If I see the goals as essential, the behaviors will seem essential too so that my world will be pleasant or not crash about me. It will seem that the goal and behaviors that I have chosen are the only choices.
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While in a state of rearranged and looking for stable foolishness, I decided I should go back to college. My children were finishing high school, my husband I were fostering 3 additional teens, and my husband was a truck driver. In my pursuit for stable foolishness I determined my goal to be a college degree to be pursued in another state. i decided to leave my 2 sons who were 18 and 19 years of age, to either go to college with me, go to work, or go into the military. I placed one of our foster sons back with his mother and returned the other 2 foster sons to the system. My children, as well as the foster children were not prepared to be without parenting, so my goals and behaviors were quite detrimental for them. My goal and behavior at this time was detrimental for me, but I could not see it. We all survived but with much damage. I believe the goal was acceptable, but my strategy and behavior was NOT.
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Chosen goals are the things we desire to reach or become, where we want to be, or who we want to become. Without the Lord though, we will be pursuing goals that are prideful and selfish, leading to downfall. The behaviours behind those goals will often reflect them; if the goals are prideful, the behaiours behind them will be as well, but if the Lord is setting the goals and we are being used by him, our behaviours and attitudes will be humble and more accurately reflect the character of Christ.
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When we have a desire, something that we want, it’s often centered on selfishness and foolishness. We want to fulfill a broken desire to feel safe, affirmed, successful etc. We develop a goal that will give us that desired satisfaction, once we have a goal we develop a strategy to get from goal to satisfcation. That strategy can include behaviors and habits that will get us what we want. And not only can the goal be outside the will of God, but the behaviors to get there can also lead us to dark places. I know for a long time, I used alcohol to control my sense of hopelessness that I’d never become what I thought I should become in life. In the moment, the drinking behavior made those terrible feelings go away along with the anxieties connected to it. That’s how I got relief but the goal and the behaviors took me to places I didn’t want to go, left me there longer than I wanted to be there, and took a lot more than I ever thought it would take. That’s a corrupted desire, goal, and strategy to get there that didn’t include the Spirit of God.