Dear Colleagues,

Sometime during my fifteen hours of seminar presentations on leadership last week I happened to mention a goal defining method that comes so natural to me, it wasn’t even in my notes. It caught the imagination of several participants and one even said, “If I do nothing else but practice this method, the whole seminar will have been worth my while.” So I added it to my notes for next time and decided to share it with you.

Long, long ago, in the dim, dark, misty past, when I was in my twenties, I read an even older book with the intriguing title, How To Get What You Want. The simple strategy the author presented is scary, both in its useand in its results. It reminds me of a saying one of my college profs used to repeat, “Look carefully where you are going, because you will go where you are looking.” Here it is:

After your Bible reading and prayer, take a scribbler and on the first page write down, by hand, ten things you really want. Limit the list to ten only. Then write a (1) in front of the one you want the most, a (2) for the next, and so on in order of priority. Close the scribbler and go on your way. The next day, after your devotional time, open your scribbler and copy your list of ten items, in order of priority, on page two. Clarify your statements, refine where necessary. Close the scribbler and go on your way. By the third day you will probably have thought of an eleventh thing you really want. Add it to the list and delete one to keep your list down to ten, then rewrite your list, in order of priority, on page three.

Simply keep doing this every day, page after page, scribbler after scribbler. If you’re like me, it won’t take more than a month for at least half the things on the first day’s list to be replaced by other, more important things you really want. That’s the scary part to realise you didn’t really know what you wanted on the first day! By the second or third month you will have deleted and replaced several items, not because they were not important, but because you got them. That’s the other scary part it really works! Be careful what you put on that daily list. It will influence your daily decisions, shape your life, and you will tend to get the items you prayerfully focus on every day.

I remember putting things like an expensive new car, a high income, and other such material things high up on my earlier lists. They soon slid lower and lower as God showed me things that were far more important, like a godly wife, healthy children, an exciting ministry and, eventually, the Scriptures translated into Canela. I did get a new car, by the way, a 1962 Volkswagen bug that served my young wife and me well for years. Thediscipline of this exercise has stuck with me all my life as I practiced it in one form or another. I kept a daily diary for over 35 years stopping only in the mid-nineties when my life as Wycliffe Canada director consisted of writing and thinking strategically all day, every day.

What are the things I want now that I am in my mid-sixties? The top ones are my relationships with God, my spouse, my family, etc. I want some specific successes in our current ministry, and some health goals. What about that new multi-giga-everything laptop computer? Yeah, I want it, but it’s not on the top ten list. Not anymore.

To Bring Him Glory, Jack