How Is Your Aim?

Good morning and welcome to Our Daily Walk.

Audio version at http://tinyurl.com/24y6oj

I remember receiving my first BB gun as a young boy. I couldn’t wait to go out and set something up to shoot. Unfortunately, my aim wasn’t really all that good. I’m sure I expected too much out of myself at that age. After all, I had watched gun battles on TV for years. You know the kind. One shot to shoot the gun out of the bad guy’s hand.

But I wasn’t a very good shot. My main problem was in my aim. I just couldn’t steady that gun enough to keep it on the target when I pulled the trigger. Over time and with much practice I was able to do much better. But at first it was very discouraging to keep missing the target.

Two elements are needed to consistently and successfully hit the target. One is that we have an actual target in mind. The other is that we practice and refine our process so that we know and have confidence that we can reach or hit our target.

As for having a target in mind, a story is told of a boy in the country who had received a bow and arrow set for his birthday. A man was driving down the road and noticed that there were bull’s eye arrow shots all over that farm—on the barn, on trees and even on the outhouse. Each arrow was precisely in the middle of the target drawn on these places. The man stopped to ask who was such a tremendous shot. The boy proudly identified himself as the one who shot the arrows. “How did you get to be so accurate?” asked the man. “Well,” said the boy, “I just shoot the arrow and then draw the target around it.” That’s one way of doing it.

Of course the other way is to know the target and practice and refine your abilities so as to hit that target whenever needed. Determined effort and the ability to learn from our missed targets will lead to success. Michael Jordan once said, “I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game’s winning shot…and missed. And I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why…I succeed.”

Two of the problems that many Christians face fall into these two areas. One: they don’t always have a good idea of what the target is. Two: they are too easily discouraged when they sometimes fail to hit that target.

Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5:9-11, “Therefore we make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be well pleasing to Him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad. Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord, we persuade men; but we are well known to God, and I also trust are well known in your consciences.”

We make it our aim, our target, to please God. That is, and should be, our goal. When we succeed in pleasing God we know that we are righteous in His sight. When we sometimes fail in pleasing Him, then we know that we must further refine our process and continue to look toward that target of pleasing God.

Friends, may we never forget that God is on our side, rooting for us to be obedient, faithful and successful in all that we do. Peter says that God is “longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” 2 Pet. 3:9.

So when we sometimes fall short of our target, or sometimes lose our aim, let us remember that God is still there waiting for us to come around to Him. After all, as Paul said in Romans 8:31, “If God is for us, who can be against us?”

Friends, I am convinced that when we aim for God’s targets we will accomplish more than we could ever imagine. How’s your aim today?

On Our Daily Walk today, may we make it our aim this very hour to be well pleasing to God. May we reflect on our speech, our actions and our reputation and make an effort today to refine these and aim them toward the target of what God wants us to be.

Our thought for the day: “Reach high, for stars lie hidden in your soul. Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal.” Pamela Vaull Starr.

May God bless you on your daily walk.