New years is an interesting holiday, met with a broad spectrum of emotions. Some enthusiastically jump on new resolutions, while others feel anything from skepticism to apathy. I am a very goal-driven person, but find that my goals come naturally and don’t coincide in any real way with a date on the calendar. Regardless, the holiday is a good opportunity to reflect on goals. I was asked to speak at my church meeting today about goals. I thought I would include some pieces of my talk as a blog post with some slight modifications to hopefully be more accessible to a broader audience.

Cliff notes of the first half: I spoke about how the most significant, effective and powerful goals in our lives are motivated by a desire to become more, or transform ourselves. Just about any goal can be: a)guilt driven, b)accomplishment driven or c)transformative in nature. With that in mind, I wanted to look at how the Gospel of Christ is really about transformative goals at its heart.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has a unique and beautiful perspective on this earth life that essentially is about a common goal. We believe that all of us lived with God before this earth, and that this life is something we all enthusiastically embraced in pursuit of a common goal we all had. Thus you can say that all of us had the exact same goal. We knew that we needed this life to grow and progress, and ultimately we all came here with the goal to return to our Heavenly Father. Truth be told, it is actually so much more than that. Were that the true nature of our goal, we all would be guaranteed success. Through Christ’s Atonement, every one of us will be brought back to the father’s presence. Indeed, the true goal that every one of us had (and hopefully still has) is that we will have become persons who could be comfortable and happy in God’s presence. Without the transformative power of Christ’s atonement, we will be so painfully aware of our unworthiness that we would be more miserable in God’s presence than out of it. In that sense, the goal of our mortal lives is the greatest and most profound goal of becoming possible. This goal is impossible to achieve without Christ’s help.

The scriptures bear witness of the transformative nature of our common goal. Christ commands us to “be ye therefore perfect.” (Mathew 5:48) In the Book of Mormon we read that we may “become the sons of God,” and that “when [Christ] shall appear, we may be like Him” (Moroni 7:48). And just in case there is any uncertainty on the matter, Doctrine and Covenants clearly states the ultimate result of our transformative goal, “therefore they are gods.” (D&C 132:20)

This is the purpose of this life, and one whose complete fulfilment will only happen long after this life. It is our only truly meaningful goal. If we do not reach this goal, no other goal or accomplishment will matter much. The wonderful news is that God’s only goal, His single-minded focus is on this very thing. We learn this clearly in the scripture the Latter Day Saints call the Pearl of Great Price where we read: “This is my work and my glory, to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man” (Moses 1:39). The first half of His goal has already been won. All of God’s children will attain immortality by virtue of the resurrection of our Savior. How amazing is it to know that God is constantly, anxiously, and actively engaged in working towards the second piece for all of us. Our eternal wellbeing is not some passive hobby that comes second to God’s real interests. To the contrary, our eternal wellbeing is the ONLY interest of God and our Savior.

The Atonement One of the greatest challenges of this life, if not the greatest one, is maintaining our focus on what should be our only goal. The formula for spiritual success, and for achieving this greatest goal sounds so simple. Our savior is the only one who has ever lived this formula to perfection. In fact, his life is the definition of this formula for success. The simple question “What would Jesus do?” is the formula. Indeed, the equation we all strive to resolve could be written as “Who I am” = “Who Jesus Is”.

One could argue that Christ has already taught us this principle as he told his disciples “If ye have seen me, ye have seen the father.” In other words, in the celestial equation, “Who Christ is = Who God is.” Thus one could say that we desire to make “Who I am = Who Jesus Is = Who God Is.”

Were that the entirety of the equation, we would all be bound to fail. That would be like trying to make “5 = infinity” work. Fortunately, Christ’s atonement makes this equation possible to resolve. “Who I am + repentance*atonement” = “Who Jesus Is.” When looked at in this way, the infinite nature of the atonement gives us all tremendous cause to rejoice. We may be a -1000, but the -1000 + infinity is beautifully equal to infinity. We are the controllers of our fate because we control the multiplier on the infinite atonement. Failure to repent puts a zero there.

When we think in these terms, the transformative power of repentance and the atonement becomes evident. We hopefully can see that this life is all about becoming.

Relating this back to goals How do your goals make you more like Christ? This is a powerful question, and one that we should ask ourselves often. It will inform us on the value of our goals, and in some cases may motivate us to discard a goal we previously thought was important. However, I believe that in most cases, this perspective can transform the motivation behind our goals rather than cause us to discard them. Let’s take a goal that may seem completely temporal. This way of thinking can be beautifully and powerfully instructive, and can even lead us to deeper understandings about what being Christ-like means.

An example of this that touched me rather profoundly deals with a lot of my physical goals that center around endurance events. I first want to give the caveat that I am a long ways away from being purely and solely motivated by striving for Christ-like attributes with regards to my endurance sports. That being said, my passion for endurance sports has been enriched as I have gained some small insights into Christ’s nature. So cycling is not a purely spiritual pursuit for me, but I have begun to find spiritual insights through it.

For example, we don’t often think of determination, grit, and unbreakable resolve as attributes of our Savior. At least, I rarely do. However, as I thought about the Atonement, a powerful thought came to me that has amplified and magnified my personal gratitude for what Christ did. As I realized that Christ’s suffering in Gethsemane and on the cross was far and away the greatest feat of endurance in all of history, I was filled with a renewed sense of awe and gratitude. As I thought on some of those times when it felt like all I could do was to keep pedaling, and I realized that at any point during Christ’s experience, he could have simply stopped pedaling (so-to-speak), my perspective on Christ’s atonement changed. I came to realize that Christ is the perfect embodiment of determination, tenacity, and toughness.

I believe that any goal that is truly worth pursuing has the potential, and indeed represents an opportunity for us to learn about Christ. Losing weight can become an insight into discipline and self mastery. We can grow in our appreciation of Christ’s perfection as we recognize that Christ too would have felt the temptation of that chocolate chip cookie as well. Christ didn’t live a perfect life by virtue of it being free from temptations. Indeed such a life would not have had any merit, and would have disqualified Him from being our savior. Rather, Christ’s life was perfect because of His perfect self mastery. I am not trying to claim that Christ never ever ate sweets, but I would say that Christ was always fully in control of his appetites and passions. There have been many rapidly devoured batches of chocolate chip cookies at my house that bear witness that I have a long way to go on that regard.

Think about how a goal for professional excellence becomes more profound as we contemplate how Christ the carpenter certainly went about His trade. Can you imagine Christ doing poor quality work, or taking short cuts that would have improved His bottom line, but given less value to His customers? I have no doubt that the mortal Christ was an excellent carpenter, but I also venture that there were more skilled craftsmen out there. Christ was however the perfect carpenter in that He certainly mastered the craft to the utmost level that was appropriate given the priorities of His life.

I invite all of us to ponder the goals we have, and ask how can those goals make us more like Christ? Truly pondering that question has the power to teach us about our Savior in very personal and impactful ways. In some cases it may reveal that a goal is not worth pursuing, but more often this question will bring deeper meaning and significance to the goals you have.