Why “Treasuring God, Experiencing Life”? — 07

The Life Goals God Directed Me to Set

This final episode of the series explores the deep longings God placed on Rick Carmichael’s heart—desires that were born through years of walking with God, struggling to discern His will, and learning to trust His voice. These desires have shaped how Rick prays, teaches, and lives today, especially as he encourages others to embrace the joy and power of treasuring God above all else.

You’ll hear reflections on the “life goal” that Rick now carries daily, and how it ties together everything God has done in his life up to this point.

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Transcript

My Life Goals

Why a Life Goal is Important

Before I explain the life goal that I formed in my early Christian life—and how I’ve modified that life goal in recent years—I want to give a general explanation about this concept.

A “life goal” is a short expression of what someone understands as being God’s unique purpose for their life. It serves as a guiding light for their path and purpose that God intends for them.

I want to highly recommend Rick Warren’s book, A Purpose-driven Life, because life goals should be selected according to the purpose that God has uniquely designed for every child of His. And, I have a suggestions that will allow for a more complete understanding of this book, especially in terms of practical applications. Let’s take a quick look at Romans 8:

Romans 8:28

And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.

Here are some specific observations about that single verse:

An initial point to make is that the phrase “those who are called” identifies every single Christian

A second point to make is that every believer is called “according to God’s purposes” for them

An implication of these two observations is the Christians need to identify what their God-given purpose is

While it’s imperative that every Christian establish a life goal, Romans 8 emphasizes a critical prerequisite—something that people have to know—before they’re able to identify appropriate Bible passages that support the life goal they believe God wants them to have. Another passage out of 1 Peter also emphasizes that every Christian has been given a unique gift for God’s purposes for them.

1 Peter 4:10

As each one has received a special gift, employ it in serving one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.

So, my one suggestion for “adding to” Rick Warren’s book is that every Christian must identify the specific spiritual gift—which alone reveals their purpose that God has given them. In this way, they’re then able to select an appropriate life goal... that’s consistent with God’s intended plan for their life.

Identifying Life Goals

Here are five appropriate questions for all believers to think about. Answering these questions can help clarify life goals and strategies for achieving those goals.

How do you want to “be found” when you stand in front of the Lord at His return (1 Peter 1:7, 2 Peter 3:14)?

What accomplishments or successes do you hope to have made in your life?

What character qualities do you want to have that accurately describe who you’ve become in your mind, heart and spirit?

What specific words of praise—about who you are and what you’ve done in your life—do you hope to hear from Jesus?

What are the areas of specific impact that you hoped to have had in the lives of other people in their faith in Jesus?

Those are good questions, right? Have you ever thought of them before? To be honest, I’d never thought of those before. I mean, I have had life goals and plans—which this section is all about. But, I don’t think I’ve ever thought about goals and plans from the perspective of how they’ll impact my meeting Jesus, face to face.

My Life Goal at 29

“Using my spiritual gift of exhortation to ‘present every man complete in Christ.’”

I consider myself very fortunate that at a really young age as a Christian, the Holy Spirit revealed to me that my spiritual gift was the gift of exhortation or encouragement.

This came about in this way. I’ve already mentioned my early spiritual education that happened while I was attending Spring Branch Community Church. I always attended adult Sunday school classes before the main church service. 

During those classes there would often be times where I would share related passages to further emphasize the point that the teacher was making at the time. As I continue to do that, people more frequently approached me after the class to tell me how much they appreciated and were encouraged by the additional verses or passages that I shared. Some also offered the suggestion that maybe I had the gift of exhortation.

The more frequently that happened, the more convinced I was by the Holy Spirit that that truly was my spiritual gift.

I shared in a prior section about my Christian mentor, Marvin Robbins. Marvin was the one who first encouraged me to select one or two verses which would serve as a life goal for me. He explained that it was important for true disciples of Jesus to have a defined, specific, life-long goal that was consistent with their spiritual gift. Knowing that my spiritual gift was exhortation, or encouragement, it seemed that an appropriate life goal should have a direct link to passages about encouragement and teaching.

After searching through various New Testament books for a while, I finally came to Colossians and found this.

COLOSSIANS 1:28–29

28 We proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, so that we may present every man complete in Christ. 29 For this purpose also I labor, striving according to His power, which mightily works within me.

This initial life goal was primarily focused on helping believers learn accurate Biblical doctrine to enable them to become “complete in Christ,” which is to grow into being mature Christians. 

Often, the way the Holy Spirit worked through my gift was in my sharing Bible verses with someone to encourage them about a particular situation they were in. At other times, it was by sharing Bible verses to try to correct someone who wasn’t accurately understanding God, or His truth.

During the most recent 13 years of my life, God has developed a vastly improved—and accurate—perspective of the life goal He has for me.

A 13-Year Meditation

What follows are relatively brief answers for 7 challenge questions  God directed me to consider over an extended period of the last 13 years. Here are those 7 questions and brief versions of what God led me to understand as the answers.

Challenge Question 1

What’s the Big Picture of the Bible?

Some people may think that the main message of the Bible is how we can be in relation to with God. That’s almost just an incidental element of the truth. The reason I say that that’s almost an incidental element of the truth is because we have to understand who God is and what the benefits of a relationship with Him are... before we would ever even consider—or even more, desire—to enter into a relationship with Him.

We call the Bible, the Word of God and more than anything else, the biggest picture of the Bible is God, Himself. 

Take a look at the book of Ezekiel and do a search using your Bible app for the number of times the phrases “I am God,” or “I am the Lord.” What normally precedes that phrase is, “that they might know that” I am the Lord, or that I am God.

Variations of those phrases are listed 73 times—in Ezekiel—in the New American Standard version that I use! 73 times in a single book, God says He wants us to know Him as God. 

“

Knowing God—His nature, character, emotions, purposes, plans, works, and wonders—is the Big Picture of the Bible. 

All of the other individual details only make sense within the context of our knowing, “This is Who our God is.” 

2 CORINTHIANS 4:6

6 For God, who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness,” is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.

The clear answer to the question, “What’s the biggest picture of the Bible?”... is perceiving the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus!

Challenge Question 2

What’s the only effective motivator for Godly obedience?

This question came to my attention in 2013. At that time, my wife and I had been attending a Protestant Christian church in Bali, Indonesia, where one person repeatedly—and, heretically—contended that we “had to obey” God’s commands... or else we risked “losing” our salvation. 

By saying that Christians had to obey, his implication was that it was our responsibility to maintain our salvation... through absolute obedience. According to him, we risked God’s imminent judgment if we weren’t obedient. In his mind, the best way for the rest of us to escape immanent judgment and to ensure our complete obedience, was through his constant exertion of external pressures and reminders of the peril of our disobedience.

I strenuously objected to his teaching in every situation where he tried to promote this false understanding of God and of His plans for bringing His children into—and maintaining them in—relationship with Himself. 

But, God used those disagreements to cause me to wonder how it is that Christians are most effectively motivated to obey Him?

In a relatively short time, the Lord helped me see a very straightforward answer from a single verse in the New Testament in the book of John.

John 14:15

If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.

This simple, incredibly obvious answer is something that a great many Christian pastors and teachers actually don’t understand. Were they to truly recognize the truth of this one single statement, they would spend much less time focusing on really insignificant, superficial changes that they hope to bring about in their members—such as them stopping smoking, or stopping drinking alcohol, or any of a number of things that truly don’t accurately reflect real change in someone’s heart.

So, the answer to Challenge Question 2 is that love is the only effective motivator for Godly obedience.

Challenge Question 3

How can Christians develop a deep love for God?

This challenge question naturally follows from understanding the answer to Challenge Question 2—that love is the most effective motivation for us being consistently obedient to the Lord.

Again, the answer is simple and straightforward. It’s illustrated in the example below of something that happened to me.

The traffic in Bali, Indonesia can be—and often is—truly horrible. Seriously. It’s a huge headache to have to get on the road to go somewhere.

Not long ago, I had gone to a local grocery store for some things and was on my way home. My route required me to cross a very busy street to get to the smaller road which led to our house. The traffic—as usual—was very heavy, and there was a solid line of cars in the opposite lane which were preventing me from turning onto that smaller road to our house. All of a sudden, someone in a car in the oncoming traffic literally stopped and the driver waved for me to cross in front of him.

That small, kind act brought an immediate smile to my face as I gave that driver a very thankful wave back. Plus, there were also these immediate thoughts, “Wow that was nice. I should also look for opportunities to be nice to others like that driver was to me!” 

The point of this story is: anytime we perceive someone doing something loving for us—no matter how small the act is–we automatically have a reciprocal desire to also do something loving back. The larger, spiritual lesson I learned was revealed in these two verses in 1 John:

1 John 4:10,19

10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
19 We love, because He first loved us.

The simple secret for developing a deep love for God is to consciously, consistently, focus our attention on seeing His expressions of love for all believers—especially as they’re revealed in His Word.

Challenge Question 4

Is there something even more effective than “loving God” for motivating Christians to grow into maturity?

After having considered the prior question, ”What’s the most effective motivation for obeying God,” and then recognizing the answer as being, “loving God,” the Holy Spirit next directed me to meditate on Mathew 22.

Matthew 22:36-38

“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” [37] And He said to him, “’You SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.’ [38] This is the great and foremost commandment.”

In my meditations, I thought most Christians would be able to remember—and correctly recite—Jesus’ answer. But, what generally “sticks” in their heads—unfortunately—is simply that they “should love God... a lot.” Their limited focus on what they should do... opens the door for all sorts of misunderstandings about the kind of love that Jesus described in His answer. 

Often, even Christians use the word “love” too casually. For example, someone might say they love pizza. Now, what they mean is that they like pizza... a lot. But when they use the word love in such a casual way, they diminish it’s “essence” in their minds. 

By diminishing the essence of the word love in their minds, that “minimized” meaning of the word love also minimizes their understanding of what Jesus meant when He said that we should love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our mind.

What I realized—which I’d never actually seen before—is that Jesus isn’t just describing that we should love God to fulfill that greatest command, Jesus is describing the quality and the intensity of the love that we should have for God.

The Holy Spirit then directed me to one of the Psalms—which I’d definitely seen before, but this time I was able to see it from this new perspective of how Christians are to “see” and think about Who our God is!

Psalm 73:25-26

Whom have I in heaven but You? And besides You, I desire nothing on earth. 26 My flesh and my heart may fail, But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

The answer to Challenge Question 4, the “secret” to how we can be motivated to love God as Jesus described in Matthew 22—and grow into maturity as believers—is actually not a secret at all. As David clearly states in Psalm 73, our valuation of God should be infinitely greater than our valuation of anything else on the earth. We need to exclusively treasure God as the soul source of life infinitely more than anything else in the world.

Challenge Question 5

How is it that we can develop the perspective of exclusively treasuring God As the sole Source of life... infinitely more than anything in the world?

Attentive readers might recognize that this question is very similar to Challenge Question 3. Both of these questions focus on how we can develop a certain outcome or result. Challenge Question 3 is how can we develop a love for God. Challenge Question 5 is how can we develop a perspective of treasuring God. The answers to both questions are similar but significantly different as well.

The answer to Challenge Question 3 is to look through God’s word to see everything He does that demonstrated His incredible love that He accomplishes... for all believers.

The answer to Challenge Question 5, is that we should look back on our lives trying to identify the unique things that God has done just for us. How it is that God has sovereignly directed us through the events, circumstances and people in our life which He’s used to draw us into relationship with Jesus, to deepen our faith and spiritual maturity... for our life to become more conformed into the image of Jesus. .

The answer to Challenge Question 5, the “secret” for developing the perspective of exclusively treasuring God as the sole Source of life—infinitely more everything in the world—is to consciously, consistently, “look back” to focus our attention on seeing God’s sovereign direction in our personal lives... to bring us to faith and to deepen our faith in Him.

Challenge Question 6

What’s the ultimate result of exclusively treasuring God... more than anything else in the world?

The Holy Spirit next directed me to consider an “intermediate issue” which was totally unexpected. It was a concept I probably would have never considered on my own. In fact, I’m certain that the vast majority of Christians simply take this concept for granted... we all just assume that we “know” what it is. 

This concept is life. As in, “What is life?” It’s as though the Holy Spirit asked me, “Rick, how do you define life itself?” 

I shared this question with a mature Christian friend of mine, and his answer clarified how confused most of us are about what life actually is. His “definition” was nothing more than a description of how it is that we recognize someone or something as “being alive.” 

But a description is a very different thing than a “definition” of what life truly is.  A true definition of the concept of life should clearly state what the essence of life is. 

Over a period of the next several months, I kept seeing what looked like nonsensical statements in God’s Word about life. Here’s a specific example from the book of John.

John 5:24–25

Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life. [25] Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.

I hope you can appreciate the “nonsensical” way these verses sound. Someone who “hears” the words of Jesus—obviously someone normal people would describe as “having” life—passes out of death into life. And, the “dead” will hear the Son of God’s voice, and then they will “live.” I kept wondering, “How can someone who looks like they have life, actually be dead?” My initial answer was that what everyone normally calls “life,” is obviously not “life...” as God defines it. 

As I tried to make sense of this “nonsense,” the Holy Spirit had me think about the creation of Adam and Eve in the garden. If there was ever a time when man experienced life the way that God wanted us to experience it, it was in the garden of Eden... before sin ever entered into the world. And, if there was ever a time to see how “life” became very different from the life that God wanted us to experience, that would be after man had sinned. 

So, I set my mind to try to identify what it was that they “lost” because of their sin. How was it that they died—even though it didn’t look like they were dead in any sort of physical way. The Holy Spirit reminded me of a verse in Romans... which He then combined with a verse in Ephesians.

Romans 5:12

Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned...

Ephesians 2:5

even when we were dead in our transgressions, [God] made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),

These two verses explicitly states what the difference is between what we had before, and what we have after sin. It’s actually the death that our sin brought. It’s our transgressions that caused us to become spiritually dead. 

So, as I considered what it is that we lost because of sin, the clear answer is that we lost our spiritual connection with God. That spiritual connection that was active when we had a spirit that was alive, that connection was done away with. God had clearly stated to Adam, “for in the day you eat it you will surely die.” God doesn’t lie. Adam did die in the very day that he and Eve ate the fruit. But their death was of their spirits. They might externally look alive, but they no longer had a living spirit inside of them which provided them with their intimate spiritual connection with God.

Since Adam and Eve, we are all “born dead” from God’s perspective... even though we definitely have an existence and... from all appearances, we look alive. And through Jesus, believers are made alive... through nothing we are able to do for ourselves, but only through the sovereign grace of God’s work in our lives.

These two verses clarified the real definition of life for me. But, the Holy Spirit wasn’t finished. There was still one more verse He pointed out to me in the book of John.

John 5:26

For just as the Father has life in Himself, even so He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself;

Definition: Life

The essence of true life is an intimate, eternal, spiritual relationship with the One, True God, by grace through faith in Jesus as the One, True Savior.

As a result of all these meditations, I began to use the terms “life” for what people experience before they meet Jesus, and “true life” for what true Christians can experience after they place their faith in Jesus. Anyone who’s not a true Christian, who lacks that spiritual connection with God Himself through Jesus, can never actually possess what God considers as true life. 

So, the answer to Challenge Question 6, is that the ultimate result of exclusively treasuring God as the sole Source of Life... more than anything else in the world... in an eternal, intimate, spiritual relationship with Him” is True Life.

Challenge Question 7

What’s the ultimate proof that a believer is most fully experiencing true life... by exclusively treasuring God?

Another way to phrase this challenge question is, “What does true life for a Christian actually look like... and what is the ultimate indicator that a believer is most fully experiencing true life?”

However, before actually addressing this Challenge Question, I want to back away and explain the “bigger picture” of how God has used all my meditations about these questions and answers to give me incredibly specific vision of the purpose for my remaining time on earth.

The best way to describe the bigger picture vision is by sharing the title of a 5-book study series that God has had me working on for years: 

Treasuring God, Experiencing Life. 

Please pay attention not just to the words but to the ordering of those words. Hopefully, you’ll be able to understand that what I’m saying is a repetition of what I said in Challenge Question 6 above, that treasuring God... is... true life.

These 5 books represent a progression—an orderly sequence—of teaching, where each book serves as the foundation or prerequisite for the following books. 

Let me also share the titles of these books and hope that you’re able to recognize the progression. 

Book 1 - Discovering the Knowledge of God

Book 2 - Embracing the Perspective of God

Book 3 - Reciprocating the Love of God

Book 4 - Esteeming the Treasure of God

Book 5 - Experiencing the Life of God

So this particular challenge question is focused on book 5, asking “What is the ultimate proof that someone is most fully experiencing true life by exclusively treasuring God—more than anything else in the world? 

I need to share another progression in Book 5 which represents my understanding of the major proofs of a believe rmost fully experiencing true life in God. The five proofs are these:

Proof 1 - Endlessly growing in relationship with God

Proof 2 - Joyfully serving God and others

Proof 3 - Spontaneously worshiping God

Proof 4 - Faithfully enduring the discipline of God

Proof 5 - Desperately desiring to be with God

Numerous Christians might claim that they’re growing in their relationship with God, and even that they’re joyfully serving God and others. 

However, I believe a much smaller number would honestly and accurately say they spontaneously worship God (with an emphasis on the word spontaneously). An even smaller number of people would say that they faithfully endure God’s discipline. But, almost no one would honestly claim to desperately desire to be with God—while they’re currently alive on earth.

Proof 5, I believe, is the ultimate indicator that someone is most fully experiencing true life... for the simple reason that so few people actually live—in a consistent basis—actively holding this perspective of wanting to be in the literal presence of Jesus.

Here’s a handful of scriptural references that clearly state we’re to have that attitude in our hearts and in our minds, of eagerly awaiting—and using my terminology of desperately desiring to be with God.

Psalm 73:25

Whom have I in heaven but You? And besides You, I desire nothing on earth. 

1 Corinthians 1:7

so that you are not lacking in any gift, awaiting eagerly the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, 8 who will also confirm you to the end, blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Philippians 1:23

But I am hard-pressed from both directions, having the desire to depart and be with Christ, for that is very much better;

Philippians 3:20

For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ;

(For additional references, please see Psalm 42:1-2, 2 Timothy 4:8, Titus 2:11-14, Hebrews 9:28, and 2 Peter 3:11-15.)

Summarizing My 13-Year Meditation

Meditating on these challenge question has led me to understand the following scenario is an accurate explanation for why I consider proof five to be the ultimate indicator of someone’s spiritual condition in relationship with God.

Think of a relationship between a man and woman. Let’s say they develop mutual feelings of affection... and that those initial feelings gradually develop into a love for each other.

What happened to start those loving feelings? What would need to happen to causes them to fall more deeply in love with each other? The simple answer is, them grow in their knowledge and appreciating of each other.

As their love grows, what happens to their desire to spend more time with the other person? Does that desire get smaller, or does it grow stronger? Obviously, the more you love someone, the more you want to be with them. 

So let’s think about Jesus in Matthew 22. Is that a deep love or not? Obviously, that’s a deep love. And what happens when that love grows to that depth that it actually turns into treasuring God above everything else in the world? 

It should happens exactly the same with us and God as it happens with a man and a woman. The more we love someone, the more we want to spend time with them and to be in their presence. 

That tendency should also be absolutely true with God. The more deeply we fall in love with Him, the more intensely we should treasure him, the more we should want to be with Him in His presence. 

Then, what does it mean if we don’t desperately want to be with God in person?  That’s a clear indication that our knowledge of Him is significantly incomplete and/or terribly wrong. What it actually indicates is that while we might be saying that we love or even that we treasure God, the truth is that we don’t. The truth is, when we don’t have that desperate desire to be with God that means there’s something else or someone else that has God’s place in our heart... and we desperately desire that person or that achievement or that opportunity desperately. But we don’t desperately desire God.

Again, this is why I consider this fifth proof of desperately desiring to be with God to be the ultimate proof of someone’s true spiritual maturity, of their love for God, and of them exclusively treasuring God as the sole Source of Life - above anything else on the world.

My finally understanding this relationship between exclusively treasuring God... and true life... has caused me to redefine the life goal that I had originally set when I was 29.

My Revised Life Goal at 72

The Primary Objective

That God use me to help his children develop the clear perspective of exclusively treasure Him as the sole Source of True Life—above anything else on world... whilch will naturally result in...

Result 1

Them clearly demonstrate the five proofs of them experiencing True Life... 

Result 2

Those demonstrations of them having True Life would also include a clearly recognized, desperate desire to be with God... 

Result 3

They would be more and more completely transformed into the very image of Jesus.

The tapestries of God

I’m sure that when we get to heaven, one of the things that the Lord will have happen is for us to meet the all people who’ve influence our lives, so that we can thank them. And to also have the people who we’ve influence meet us, so that they can thank us. 

In this way, we’ll all see the glorious, sovereign way that God “wove all our lives together” into this incredibly gorgeous tapestry... that’s actually a giant mural of Himself. 

And that word tapestry is really such an amazing—and exceptionally appropriate—word for God’s work in all our lives!

For More Thorough Answers

Again, these are brief answers to these Challenge Questions. 

A more elaborate explanation of how God led me to see these answers will be included in an overview document that describes the 5-book study series—Treasuring God, Experiencing Life—that I’m developing.

If you’d like a copy of this overview document, please contact me by email. I’ll be very happy to forward a copy of that document to you as soon as it’s finished—which I hope to be by the end of August 2025.