Pitfalls To Watch Out For As You Set Spiritual Goals

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You have set spiritual goals. Yay!! 🙂

Now that you know what you aiming for, prepare yourself. You are going down a path that Satan wants to discourage you from. A path of growing in your relationship with God.

You have an enemy who is roaming the earth like a raging lion seeking to destroy you. (1 Peter 5:8) Imagine the precautions you would take if you had a real-life lion tracking you! You would probably choose not to eat bacon if you knew a lion was sitting in the bushes besides your house. In fact, you would consider carrying a weapon to keep the lion at bay so that you wouldn’t become his next meal.

Life would be different if there was a lion following you around all day trying to eat you.

When you set spiritual goals, Satan sees you as a tasty dish to munch on. Why? Because he wants nothing more than to see your relationship with God grow stale, be filled with apathy, and plagued with doubt and fear. Let’s take precautions to avoid Satan the same way we would take precautions to avoid a lion outside our house!

As you intentionally seek to live a Christ-centered life with the help of your spiritual goals, Satan will take notice. Be prepared. He has many schemes to get you to fall away from your intentional walk with the Lord.

Let’s consider some of the pitfalls that can occur as we set about to ambitiously keep the the spiritual goals we set.

 

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A Quick Word Of Hope

Before we look at these, I just wanted to share a quick word of hope.

You do not face these temptations alone.

Yes, we are humans who will struggle and fail. However, we have a great Savior and Lord who walks with us. He loved us enough to die for us while we were still sinners.

Because of this great love, we can rest assured that even we do mess up and fall for some of Satan’s traps, God will provide us a way out of the those traps. He will cover us with His love and forgiveness. God can help us turn away from these temptations. It is God’s desire to see us living victoriously in the power that only comes from Him.

Depend on God. He is our hope and our salvation. We need never fear any scheme of the devil. But we do need to be aware of Satan’s schemes we can avoid them!

 

Common Pitfalls That Happen After You Have Set Spiritual Goals

Setting spiritual goals is easy. Following through on those goals is a lot more challenging. Be aware of these common pitfalls that many Christian women fall prey to once they set spiritual goals.

Pride

Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.
Proverbs 16:18

When we set spiritual goals, it can be easy to allow pride to grow in our hearts. Pride over our accomplishments. Our “goodness.” We can find ourselves thinking, “That lady sitting a few rows ahead of us at church certainly doesn’t seem to have spiritual goals. I am so much better than her!”

Pride has a way of sneaking subtlety into our minds and hearts when we compare ourselves to other Christians. Why? Because other Christians are humans with human sinfulness and weakness. They are not a good standard to measure our goodness by!

Christ is our standard. None of us pass that standard. We are not perfect. Only Christ was perfect and the only boasting we should do is boasting in Christ and His redeeming work on the cross. 

When pride is taking over your heart, remember to compare yourself to the perfect standard of Christ. Seek to glorify God, not yourself, as you meet your goals. Humble yourself before God and ask forgiveness often when you see pride taking hold of your life. Rely on Him and His strength, not your own, as you move towards a more intentional Christian life.

 

Fear

For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.

2 Timothy 1:7

Did the very idea that you might face spiritual warfare make you nervous? Have you hidden your spiritual goals from your spouse, children, and everyone else? Are you worried they will tease you after the inevitably event of you slipping up in your spiritual goals?

Fear can paralyze us from taking the necessary steps after we set spiritual goals.

As Christian women, we do not have to live in fear. When fear raises up, let’s turn to God. Read Bible verses that reassure of God’s presence. Write visual reminders to place around your house. Look at them when you have a rough day of failure. You can still trust that God is using those rough circumstances to grow closer to you.

When you are afraid of Satan or others around you, let it become a reminder of God’s presence with you. Seek Him out more when you find fear trying to control your heart.

 

Impatience

Wait on the LORD; Be of good courage, And He shall strengthen your heart;
Wait, I say, on the LORD!

Psalm 27:14

Being set apart in holiness takes a life time. Sanctification is the fancy word for living our lives differently for the glory of God. Being sanctified is a lifelong process. It begins the moment we surrender to Jesus at the Cross and it will end only once we are present with Jesus in Heavenly glory.

When you set spiritual goals, it can seem like you should see a difference right away. Perhaps your prayer life has been nonexistent or dull. After three days of trying to pray more intentionally you begin to sense impatience. Why are you not feeling more close to God? Shouldn’t prayer be a joy to you already? What does it take to enjoy these quiet times talking with God?

Christian women did not become prayer warriors in a day. It took days, weeks, and even years of consistent prayer times before they found growing joy from their prayer lives.

Simply because we set spiritual goals, we should not expect to see immediate fruit from our work. Of course, God can bless us and our efforts quickly at times but it won’t necessarily happen that way.

Guard against impatience. Patiently move forward each new day trusting that the Lord will bless your faithfulness.

 

Selfishness

So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 

Galatians 5:16

When you set spiritual goals, it might surprise you how changing simple areas of your life can cut into your selfish tendencies. Perhaps you choose to give up 15 minutes a day of Facebook scrolling for Bible study time. Your fleshly side will likely groan against the work necessary to study your Bible rather than mindlessly scroll.

Work to tune out your flesh’s complaining ways. When you sense that your fleshly desires are winning out over the Spirit’s leading, seek the Lord. Pray and ask for His strength to do what needs to be done. Continue to faithfully follow the Spirit’s leading and deny your flesh. Over time, you will find your selfish tendencies in certain areas will fade as you submit yourself to the Lord.

Our desires will align with what we love. As we grow in a loving relationship with God, our love for the world and its trappings will fade. Continue to develop habits that deny yourself and honor God.

 

Idolatry

Therefore the Lord said: “These people draw near to Me with their mouths and honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. Their worship of Me is but rules taught by men.

Isaiah 29:13

While you may not have little golden statues setting around your house, you might still find yourself susceptible to idols once you set spiritual goals. Your idol might be the success you experience with your spiritual goals. Your idol might even be the list of goals that you have written down.

For example, say you have set a goal to be in community with other Christians at least once a week. After a few weeks of consistently attending Bible study, you notice others who waver in their attendance. Your pride kicks in because you are attending “better” than others. Then you make the priority of attendance an idol. You keep attendance at center of your life, not as a means to please God but to show off your own “holiness.” The activity has become the lord of your heart rather than the Lord Himself.

When you sense something becoming more central to your life than the Lord, take a step back. Pray and seek Him to help you fix your heart attitude. No, this doesn’t mean that you stop meeting with other believers. It doesn’t mean that you stop reading your Bible faithfully. It does mean that with the Lord’s help, you fight off the temptation to worship the activity rather than worship God.

 

Unfaithfulness

One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches?

Luke 16:10-11

We are called to be faithful with little. When we set spiritual goals, we need to see this as an area of little where we can show great faithfulness in small ways.

This is one reason why it is encouraged to set reasonable, actionable, and attainable goals. You want goals that can be taken on one day at a time, one faithful action at a time.

Show up each day and do the work necessary to grow in the areas the God has pointed out to you. God can help you to be faithful when you don’t feel like it. Often it really is just the action of grabbing our Bible when we want desperately to reach for our phone to scroll Facebook. Once we have faithfully started the day’s task, it is not nearly as bad or as hard as it seemed even minutes before.

Stay faithful when you don’t feel like it. Guard against Satan’s attempts to distract you. Avoid unfaithfulness in your quest for a deeper relationship with God.

 

Doubt

But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

James 1:6-8

Have you even seen a trust fall? One person stands with their back to another person. The person is expected to fall backwards without their knees bending or their arms flailing. Basically, the idea is they so trust the person behind them that they don’t worry. They can fight their body’s natural instincts that want to stop the fall because they know that the person behind them will catch them. No matter what.

The opposite of trust is doubt. When we set spiritual goals, it is often a lot like taking a trust fall backwards toward God. Will we trust that He can give us the daily strength to make the right decision? Can He truly help us face the weaknesses in our life? Does He really keep His promise to never leave and forsake us?

When doubt sneaks in, our ability and desire to go through with our spiritual goals will plummet. Sometimes we doubt that God is able to help us grow closer to Him. Other times, we doubt that His Word is understandable so we give up our Bible reading time after a few days of frustration. Often, we doubt that what He has called us to do is really even important.

Satan loves when doubt is winning in our hearts. Trust is key to any relationship and when we allow our doubts to take the place of our trust in God, Satan finds us easy and vulnerable for attacks. Weed out doubts. Take doubts you experience to God. Ask for a friend to pray with you. Read stories of other Christians who have faced doubt and overcome. Study the Bible to see all the ways that God has proved trustworthy.

Stop doubting and believe. God has beautiful, big plans for you. He loves you. He can be trusted.

Apathy

Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men.

Colossians 3:23

Apathy is probably the most sneaky pitfall that we find ourselves facing. Other Christians aren’t working this hard to grow in their faith. Why should I? Do I really need to be this radical for the Lord? I don’t want to be seen as a weirdo.

Perhaps you even do your daily steps toward your spiritual goals faithfully but your heart is not in it. You read your Bible for 5 minutes each morning. However, 2 minutes later you couldn’t repeat what you read because you honestly did not care.

When we first start growing spiritually it can be exciting. We see little steps that add up. God shows Himself to us in little precious quiet moments of our day. It is awesome. But then, it becomes common place. We grow used to it and the honeymoon stage wears off. Of course, we keep on faithfully plugging away but only because it is a part of our schedule-like brushing our teeth. Once apathy has crept in, we become spiritually weakened and open to other pitfalls more easily.

When you set spiritual goals, prepare yourself for the fact that the excitement will wear off. Prepare for the fact that not everyday you will feel like working towards your goals. That is okay. Just don’t let your heart grow cold to in your faith because the warm fuzzy feelings have faded for a season.

Christians have high and low experiences in their faith. This is normal. Guard against letting your heart grow stale to the truth of God and His Word.

Resources To Consider

Here are some items that might help you more as you seek to intentionally live for Christ.

Set Your Spiritual Goals Workbook

If you want help setting your spiritual goals, be sure to grab my free Set Your Spiritual Goals Workbook. This free printable comes with helpful planning tools to help you set and stick with your spiritual goals. As you avoid the common temptations that will happen, the tools in this workbook will help you stay faithful to the goals God has called you to set.

Prayer Journals

Keep your prayer life organized. Watch as God faithfully meets you in your prayer time over the course of the year.

Organized Christian Living

It is easier to keep your spiritual goals if you have a place that is pretty and functional to store all your information!

Your Turn

What spiritual goals have you set?

Are there areas that you struggle with once you set your spiritual goals?

Be sure to share ways that have helped you persevere after you set spiritual goals in the comments below!

 

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