“Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead, I pursue as my goal the prize promised by God’s heavenly call in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 3: 13-14 (CSB)

Recently I started playing a game on my phone called Homescapes. It’s one of those games where you slide the pieces around to make matched sets of three, four, or five. It’s similar to Candy Crush or any of those other “Match 3” games.

As you get to higher levels, objectives aside from simply “clearing the board” arise. Sometimes you need to thaw frozen blocks. Other times you have donuts that need to move to the bottom of the screen. There are acorns and cookies that need blasting, boxes for opening, and spider webs that need blowing away.

If I’ve played several levels in a row, I start moving pieces without remembering to check on that level’s goal. I may clear a dozen cookies before realizing that the objective is to remove 45 blue pieces instead. The cookies had nothing to do with winning but I’d used half my moves clearing them and didn’t have enough to achieve the actual goal. I failed the level and had to start over.

It’s easy to get the same way about life. We can focus on achieving a certain number in ministry, getting a particular policy approved, or obtaining a respected title. Our spiritual life can become centered around reading the Bible in a certain number of days, completing all the questions in a Bible Study workbook, or memorizing large passages of scripture.

The Ultimate Goal

None of those things are necessarily bad, they’re methods and milestones we use along the way. But not the ultimate goal we are meant to be striving for. Paul often described the Christian life as a race, a competition in which the only thing that matters is how we cross the finish line. He isn’t looking at the earthly achievements because he is constantly looking ahead to remember what his true goal is.

Back in Philippians 3:10 he says his goal is to “know [Christ] and the power of his resurrection”. This is not a goal that can possibly be obtained this side of Heaven. There is always more to learn about Jesus, always more ways to become like him. That means this is a goal that will carry us through the rest of our lives.

In Homescapes it’s easy to look at the board and assume you know what to do with it. Life is the same way. It’s easy to look at our surroundings, our situation, and our relationships and assume we know what God wants us to do with them. We can work industriously towards a goal that God never placed in front of us because we didn’t check with him, didn’t look into the Bible for support, didn’t examine how it fit into the larger picture of God’s plan for redemption and salvation.

The Right Goal

Before you invest in another project or declare your dedication to a cause, ask yourself if you have the right goal in mind. Would this activity be a part of your pursuit of knowledge of Christ? Or would this achievement feel like the ultimate Christian accomplishment as defined by some worldly standard? Do you have your eyes on the true goal God laid out for us or have you been distracted by the shiny thing you think you should do?

It may be time for all of us to look away from the situation and gather a little information. If we review our “heavenly call”, we might just find we’ve been running toward the wrong goal.

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