Someone once said that if you don’t have a goal, you’ll hit it every time. It’s all too easy to float through life without thinking much beyond today. One way to ensure that we achieve anything is to set goals. We often have career goals and financial goals, but as Christians, our walk with the Lord is more valuable than either of those things, yet few people set goals to help them grow in Christ. So I want to encourage you to set some goals for your walk with the Lord. Here are 7 reasons why you need to set quiet time goals.

1. To set expectations for yourself

If you have no goal, your expectations for yourself become somewhat arbitrary. Why do you have a quiet time? Is it because it’s “the thing to do?” And if you do have a quiet time, what specifically do you hope to get out of it? Answering with generic answers like “to love the Lord” or “to grow in Christ” is great, but not very specific. What do you mean by “grow in Christ?” What does that look like? If you don’t have spiritual goals, your growth is stunted. If you don’t have spiritual goals, your growth is stunted. Click To Tweet

2. To be consistent

Without a goal, it is unlikely our quiet time will be consistent. Purpose makes something worth doing, and something we want to do regularly demands clear reasons for doing it. Setting goals provide us with reasons to become consistent at taking time with the Lord, since that time helps us achieve something clear and worthwhile.

3. To grow

If someone were to ask you in what ways you’ve grown over the last 12 months, would you have to think about the answer or could you provide two or three clear ways you’ve grown? Would you be able to attribute that growth to what you’ve done in your quiet time? Most of us don’t focus on spiritual growth, but the Lord has a goal for our growth, so why don’t we? Failing to plan is planning to fail. When it comes to spiritual growth, not only does failing to grow raise questions about the validity of our claim to salvation, it deprives us of the joy of growth and growing in the knowledge of the Lord.The Lord has a goal for our growth, so why don’t we? Click To Tweet

4. To grow specifically

Growth is sometimes a generic and uncertain thing. What is growth? If our aim is to just “grow,” we really don’t know where we are heading. Setting goals helps me think carefully about the specific ways I need to grow so that the Lord is glorified more in areas where I glorify Him least.

5. To measure growth

How do we measure growth? Is it by the number of chapters of the Bible we read each day? How many times we’ve read the Bible? It should be obvious, but just reading the Bible doesn’t mean we’re growing, but how would you know if you were? Without a goal, we can’t determine whether we have grown or not. If we can’t determine whether we’ve grown, we can’t tell whether we’re using our time well or whether the Lord is even working in us.

6. To be a blessing to others

God calls us to serve those around us. Christ is the ultimate example of serving (Mark 10:45), and we are called that we may be a blessing (1 Pet 3:9), which begins with our families as we live out the grace that God is working in our lives. The more we grow in godliness and Christlikeness, the more we will be a blessing to those around us, not just in our service, but even in our character and eventually our example. There is no such thing as being so heavenly minded we are of no earthly good! Set goals in your most important relationship, so your other relationships benefit.Set goals in your most important relationship, so your other relationships benefit. Click To Tweet

7. To glorify God

Ultimately everything we do should be about the glory of God (1 Cor 10:31). Our quiet times are ultimately for His glory, since they are a time when we bring our hearts before Him, so that His likeness is increasingly formed in us. The ultimate purpose of this is to glorify Him in the way we think, act and live. Goals can help us glorify God by encouraging the right growth to bring this about.

Of course, it is very possible that you actually already have goals for your spiritual life. If so, have you written them down? What are they?

What goals have you set for your spiritual life?