Over the past few weeks we have been thinking about areas of focus and goals. How to decide what they are and how to achieve and maintain them. I believe that in order to be effective, these things are crucial. Sitting over the top of our goals and our areas of focus is our vision and our values. By vision, I mean our own personal mission statement. That sounds a bit too grand for an individual person. I mean, what is it that we hope to do in the short time we are living on this earth. Having some kind of idea on this is, I believe, an essential part of living an effective life. Therefore, working out your personal vision and values lead to a more effective life.
What do I mean by an effective life? Let me be clear on what I don’t mean. I don’t mean that you need to be Elon Musk and and have a life that, whatever we may think about him, seems to be changing the world in some big, flashy and dramatic way. I don’t mean that you need to be someone who is always on the go, all guns blazing in pursuit of some grandiose dream. That is not what is in view here. However, too often this is something that we don’t really think about. I am reminded of the movie ‘Office Space’. Cracking film if you haven’t seen it. The main character is Peter Gibbons (I think). His life is to go to his office each day and do the bare minimum that he needs to do to not get fired. Outside of this, he seems to spend his time getting coffee at ‘Chachees’ and then watching Kung Fu movies. The picture is of a person drifting through life, following the path of least resistance.
Being effective means being focussed on what is truly important. Being effective means using the time and resources we have with wisdom and godliness in a proactive and intentional way. As I have said before, it doesn’t just relate to our work but the whole of our life. Therefore our vision for our lives, should not simply relate to our work. In essence, it just means having a clear idea of what is important and allowing that to set the tone and agenda of your life rather than reacting the ebbs and flows of our feelings and desires.
What are your values?
Before we can even think about considering our vision, we need to work out what our values are. What is important to us? What matters? This is a list that will be different for every single person as we are all different people. It can include things that are important habits that you want to build and maintain. It can include bigger things that matter to you in the world or smaller things about the person that you want to be. To give you an idea, I will give you some examples from my list.
Before that though I want to respond to something I have often thought. I am a Christian and therefore I react a bit to phrases like ‘deciding what is important to me’. Really, I need to submit myself to God and His Word and allow this to determine what is important to me. This is in large part true. But this does not negate the point I am making. We have been made differently and the Bible teaches us that we will all have different gifts. For some people, their particular gifting will mean that being incredibly organised is a value that they have. For others, made very differently, this will not matter to them. Some people will consider that helping Christians to delve deeply in theology will be a value for them, for others, it may be helping Christians to cling to and apply the gospel in painful and traumatic circumstances. For others it may be taking the gospel to unreached people. Within the realm of living under the sovereign rule of God, there is plenty of scope for us to serve and to desire to serve in a multitude of different ways.
Here are some of the values that I have listed:
- Reading the Bible Every day
- Meditating on the gospel
- Having the gospel at the centre of my family
- Helping to ensure the gospel is preached and God’s people are discipled.
- Developing a deep, consistent and fruitful prayer life
- Reading and learning and so reading deeply, reading widely and owning books
- Being thorough in my work
- Using equipment that works, works well, and not running things to the ground to the point they become less reliable
- Continuing to challenge myself
Why have a vision?
Obviously not every single one of the values that you list is going to directly inform the vision that you might have but the vision will come out of those values. At least, there is no point in having a vision that is inconsistent with your values. Why bother though? The reason is to apply to the whole of our life the principle that drives us into planning our days and weeks. The point is that you cannot do everything. The phrase is, if you aim at nothing, then you will very likely hit nothing. Having a plan for the day or the week allows you to focus on the things that you intentionally and proactively set out to achieve. Having a vision, on a grander scale, enables you to be more focussed on that grander scale. I do not advocate that we be relentless in pursuit of our vision to the exclusion of all else (though it does tend to be these people who have the biggest impact on the world). But, this will help you in your decision making throughout your life. If you have worked out
For the Christian, the mission of Jesus Christ is global and will last for the whole of human history. You are temporal and finite. You cannot serve Jesus across the whole globe, in every aspect of his mission for the entirety of his mission. Therefore, the manner in which you serve him will be limited. It is well within the realm of godly and wise Christian living to consider humbly and prayerfully, seeking wisdom from others, what is the specific way in which you will seek to serve him in his mission during your life. We cannot all be parents, we cannot all be pastors, we cannot all be evangelists, we cannot all be theologians, we cannot all go to Japan, or Italy or Africa. Making a decision on this, will give you a valuable tool in deciding how to use your time day to day. As in the title – Working out your personal vision and values lead to a more effective life
How to decide your vision
Having considered our values and what is important to us, we can then turn ourselves to consider what we will strive to do with our lives whilst we have time on earth.
For me, I have set myself an overarching ‘vision’ that I then cash out in 4 different areas of life. For me personally, in my family, in ministry and in work. This helps to keep me focussed.
Your vision will come out of your values and needs to be consistent with them. If they are not then the reality is that it will be something that you do not actually care about.
For example, one of my key values is that having good, solid and deep theology is critical to living a godly Christian life. Therefore, an aspect of my vision is ‘To help as many Christians as possible to develop a deep theological mind.’ Implementing this does not mean that I will set up seminaries and write books. It may look like that for some, depending on many other factors. For others it may look like seeking to do this in their family and in their local church.
In considering your vision, do not be afraid to think big. Most people over estimate what can be achieved in a year and under estimate what can be achieved in 10 years. Also, this is something that you will refine over time, likely making it more specific as you go. I say it again, working out your personal vision and values lead to a more effective life
Implementing your vision
The component parts of implementing this are all the things we have slowly talked through before. Setting goals, deciding on projects, habits and routines to achieve those goals and the taking action on the small tasks and habits of every day life that slowly chip away at the larger goal. Let me give you two examples.
- One part of my vision is to help as many people as possible to be more effective in their use of the time and resources that God has gifted to them. To do this, I have set up some routines to write blog posts, podcasts and YouTube videos every week. Not every single post, podcast and video will hit that aim. But every post I produce serves that goal as, in addition the possibility that some people might be helped directly, it also enables me to learn and grow that I might help more people directly in the future.
- If a part of my vision was to help as many Christians as possible to develop a deep theological mind. Then reading and meditating on the Bible, reading theology, etc are going to be key parts of that. It is also going to govern how I relate to my family at home.
The point is that I have goals, and projects, habits, routines and tasks that fit in with and serve the overall vision.
Humility is key here. We are not God. We can have plans, ideas and a vision for our life but we must always remember the principle in Proverbs 16:9 – The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps. Life does not submit to our plans. Humility is key here.
Being reflective is key as well. As life changes, our priorities will need to change with it. This will mean sometimes tweaking our vision, making it clearer and more specific. Sometimes it might mean moving away from certain things as they no longer fit with the course our life has taken. This is fine.
Lastly, I would say that it takes a certain kind of person to be utterly relentless in the pursuit of a singular goal. Most of us are not that and so trying to be that is going to be massively detrimental to us and everyone around us. It’s ok to have a goal that doesn’t serve a particular vision. I have a goal to one day finally complete Skyrim and every game in the Final Fantasy series (currently I have completed no. 1-7 and have 8-15 to go). This serves little to no purpose but I love those games! Some goals may not directly serve anything but may indirectly serve it. Health & Fitness will often fall into this category as will maintaining a home. They are not the purpose of life, but they can aid in serving that purpose. It becomes a damaging thing when these things start to take over from what is the purpose.
You don’t need to be relentless, you don’t need to change the world, but proactive intentionality over the course of our life will prevent us from being that drifter who doesn’t really use the gifts, abilities and resources we have to do anything with them. Working out your personal vision and values lead to a more effective life
If you want to read another perspective on this then check out this post by Carl Pullein.
