What happens to people who never really establish a purpose for their life? They may have some general, vague goals like just wanting to be happy. But, they never try to put together any kind of plan for accomplishing that desire. What happen to people who make money their life goal? They end up leaving this planet and everything they produced. They enter into eternity, with little or no investments there. What happens to people who make pleasure and fun their goal? They usually end up with addictions and habits that have enslaved them.

If you don’t have a definite purpose or goal for your own life, you are open and available for other people and other things to shape your future. They are more than happy to stucture your life, your plans, and your goals to serve their plans, goals, and life. When you get in a car and start down the road, you know you have to establish a destination and a plan for reaching that destination. Aimless driving won’t do much for meeting your needs. And, just sitting in the house won’t take you anywhere either.

If you only dream, wish, and hope for things, you still won’t be able to get what you want and need. As you look at what other people are accomplishing, you can envy them and want what they have; but, that alone will not bring any of those things into your life. Knowing what you would like to have is only the beginning of you starting to take control over your own life.

It’s true that if you don’t care what happens to you or how your life goes, then your future will be very questionable. But, if you start to care and start to dream, you inspire hope and desire to develop in your heart. If you allow Jesus to show you all the possibilities, you help your mind and heart to produce a hunger inside you. That hunger begins to push you toward thinking about what it is going to take to get it. When you go shopping and start seeing all that is available to buy, your vision and expectations get influenced. You can see what is available, what you could be possessing, what could be enhancing your life, and what could be meeting your needs. Before the shopping experience, your vision and expectations were limited to past experiences. Jesus is going to raise your expectations to a supernatural, God-sized level. And, He is going to give you the power, the grace, and the wisdom to get these things into your life.

If you have a general plan that doesn’t have steps and procedures for your dreams and goals to be reached, then you will never be able to know for sure what you should do and how you should accomplish them. Your plan will be so weak, you will find yourself being distracted, fooled, and misinformed. You will wander all over the place, repeat various mistakes, go down dead-end streets, and fail to act on great opportunities.

You must have a plan that is clear to you and capable of being measured as to whether or not it is being fulfilled. It has to be a plan that is clear enough that you are able to see how to put it into place. You have to see where you are at the moment and then see what steps would take you to your destination. It can’t have any gaps or missing steps in it; it must have all the procedures necessary to help you fulfill your goal.

Hope is a very valuable tool for helping you reach a destination or goal; however, hope can be put in all kinds of dreams. You can look at other people, their accomplishments, and their possessions and wish or hope you get them. If that desire is a realistic one, then there can be a clear plan developed that will help you reach the goal. But, if it is an unrealistic expectation, then you will find it difficult formulating the necessary steps for reaching that objective.

Realistic plans will make sense, will have obvious potential, and will be within the realm or scope of your abilities. You will see a definite potential for the goal being accomplished. That will be because you can see how you would go about bringing it into reality. If the goal is just a wild goal that is being produced in the fantasy of your imagination, then it may create great excitement but not give you a realistic goal, plan, or result. But, as you read the Bible, it isn’t showing you what you can realistically do; it is showing you what Jesus can realistically do.