100 Monkeys

My daughter Lindsey loves monkeys. I don’t remember when she first fell in love with them, but it’s been going on for awhile now. Since she was first smitten, she has begun building a collection of stuffed monkeys: big ones, little ones, brown ones, blue ones, pink ones, realistic monkeys, cartoonish monkeys—well, you get the idea.

Lindsey’s goal is to have one hundred monkeys (she has about 65 as of this writing). Actually, her goal is to have a million monkeys, but she has settled on the number 100 as an intermediate goal. She looks for monkeys everywhere we go, especially if she knows I’m likely to buy her something at our destination.

The other day, we were passing a garage sale on our way home from running an errand, and Lindsey’s eagle eye (monkey eye?) spotted a large stuffed monkey in a box. “Oooo, I want that monkey!” she said eagerly. She didn’t get the monkey that day (it was huge), but I know she won’t give up hope that she’ll get more in the future. She won’t stop looking, either, or hoping to receive monkeys for her birthday or for Christmas. She’ll do everything she can to reach her goal.

You and I would do well to be similarly dedicated to our goals, especially our spiritual goals. The problem is that most of us don’t even have spiritual goals, except in some vague sense. If we do, we usually don’t have much of a plan for reaching them, and if we have a plan, we usually don’t stick to it.

If we don’t have a goal in the first place, that’s a huge problem. We ought to at least know where we want to go spiritually, or we’ll be going in the wrong direction. Failing to have spiritual goals is about as good as having the wrong goal. The Bible teaches us over and over that God’s goal for us is to be holy. To be like Jesus. That needs to be our spiritual goal, first and foremost.

Okay, so we have a goal. Do we have a plan for getting there? Most of us have a rather vague plan that includes going to church and maybe reading our Bible or praying occasionally. So we go to church when it’s convenient, and we pray and read our Bibles when it’s convenient, which is to say almost never. We need to have a better plan than that, and our plan must include regular church attendance, prayer, Bible study, and service, to name a few. Exactly what this plan will look like will differ from person to person, because God made us all different, and our circumstances are all different. But each person’s plan should include at least these things.

Don’t know what your plan should include? Ask God. Tell Him you want to be more like His Son, and you know you’ll need to do certain things to put yourself in a position for Him to work in you, teach you, and conform you to Jesus’ image. Ask Him what those things should be—what you should do, when you should do it, and how often you should do it.

And then be willing to work at it! It does little good to have a plan if you aren’t going to act on it. Even the best plans in the world will fail if you don’t do them. Now, lest you think I don’t realize how hard it is to take consistent action when you are in the midst of parenting, let me remind you that I have five children! I know it’s hard, and I admit that I don’t always get it right either. I fail to do things I know I should do, or I give priority to things that should take a back seat to spiritual things. But God will never ask you to do something that He won’t help you do. So once you know what His plan is for you, ask Him to help you accomplish it. Be willing to set aside your priorities for His. Work at it even when it’s hard.

True, even with all the hard work in the world, you can’t produce godliness in yourself. Godliness is produced in you by God, but it’s a whole lot more likely to happen when you show Him you’re interested.

Lindsey is willing to work hard to reach her goal. Her goal is collecting monkeys.

Are you willing to work hard toward the goal of knowing and serving the Lord your God?

1 Kings 8:61—Therefore devote yourselves completely to the Lord our God, walking in his statutes and keeping his commandments, as at this day.