To Set God-Centered Goals: ASK

July 19, 2025 Cathleen Zahradnik

“If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.” James 1:5 NIV

How do you set goals? When I start the goal-setting process by asking God, I am more likely to complete the task and feel better about what I accomplish. God-centered goals start with asking God. We need His perspective. He’s the One who created us for His purposes. He chose you and appointed you to bear fruit that will last. (John 15:16)

When you begin by seeking God, you will set goals that are satisfying and fulfilling. Asking God for wisdom leads you to choices that help you become all that He designed you to be.

Seeking God first keeps you on track. Your time in His presence reminds you of what is truly important. God-centered goals grow a God-centered life. A God-centered life is the abundant life overflowing with joy even when circumstances are less than perfect.

Let’s Pray!

July 12, 2025 Cathleen Zahradnik

Greetings, Dear Friend! Let’s pray some Scripture together!

Father, I am Yours. I will seek You and Your strength. I will seek Your presence continually. (Psalms 105:4, 1 Chronicles 16:11)
Lord, I thank You for being present and active in my life. Help me to acknowledge You in all my ways trusting You to direct my path. (Proverbs 3:5-6)
Help me to listen for Your voice behind me saying, “This is the way. Walk in it.” (Isaiah 30:21)
Lord, I know that I am unable to fulfill Your purposes without Your power. Apart from You, I can do absolutely nothing. (John 15:5)
Do Your work in me so that You can do Your work through me. You give me the want-to and the ability to do what pleases You. (Philippians 2:13)
Father, help me to remain faithful, focused, and fruitful in my efforts for You because You will follow through on Your promises to bless me. Nothing done for You is ever in vain. (1 Corinthians 15:58)
Lord, You are at work in me and will complete all that You planned for my life. You will remain at work in me until my last breath. (Philippians 1:6)
Father, if I stay focused on You, I will be fruitful in the ways that matter most. You have chosen me and appointed me to go and bear fruit that will last long after I am gone. (John 15:16)
Lord, help me to experience Your love so that I am filled with all that I need to do Your will. I will be made complete and filled with all the life and power that come from you. (Ephesians 3:19)
Dear Father, You are above all and in all. In You, I live and move and have my being. (Acts 17: 28)
Father in heaven, You are able to do infinitely more than all I can ask or imagine. Your mighty power is at work in me and through me. I will give You glory forever and ever. Amen! (Ephesians 3:20)

Did any of these prayers resonate with you? Why not copy it and set it as a reminder on your phone? Make it yours, my friend, and watch how God responds.

Blessings!

Celebrating Success

July 5, 2025 Cathleen Zahradnik

“For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him” Philippians 2:13 NLT

Stopping to celebrate success is a necessity, not a luxury. I’ll admit that celebrating does not come naturally to me. Some people are a party waiting to happen. Everything becomes a reason to celebrate. Not me. I guess celebrating has seemed impractical. But it is not. I’ve learned that celebrating is a necessary part of the goal achievement process.

What good is achieving a goal if you don’t celebrate it? When you mark that goal complete, it’s important that you do something to celebrate it. Plan in advance how you want to acknowledge the occasion.

Why is it important to celebrate your successes?

Celebrating success is not about you. Celebrating your success is your opportunity to thank God for what He has done to help you achieve your goal. He has worked in your circumstances. He has given you wisdom. But most of all, He has worked in your character.

Every goal you achieve, if it is a God-centered goal, is part of becoming the person He has designed you to be. It’s part of accomplishing the good works He planned in advance for you to do. (Ephesians 2:10) When you celebrate your successes, you celebrate God’s work in your life.

What to Do When You Drift Off Course: Getting Your Goal Back in the Window

June 28, 2025 Cathleen Zahradnik

“No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.” Philippians 3:13-14 NLT

It’s about halfway through the year. How are you doing on reaching the goals you set in January? If you are at all like me, you may notice a bit of drift.

The movie Apollo 13 depicts a scene where the astronauts needed to manually adjust their trajectory. Normally, their computer system would have kept them on track but because of damage from an in-space explosion most systems, including navigation, were shut down to reserve as much power as possible for their return trip to earth. Without power their course had drifted.

After the explosion they had one goal, to get home. Making the adjustment required powering up only thrusters for a very short time. Navigation had to be manual. The plan: Keep the earth in the window and they could adjust their course and make it home.

The scene is full of tension as the astronauts fight to keep the earth in the window after the sudden burst of rocket power. Those tense moments led to great relief. Successfully keeping the earth in the window corrected their drift and led to their safe return. A simple strategy based on their primary goal.

I’ve noticed the trajectory toward my goals is a bit off. Other details of life have crowded out tying up some loose ends so I can mark those goals complete. One goal is getting my book across the publishing finish line. It’s time to get my goals back in the window. I may not get perfectly on track, but I can get closer to where I want to be.

Getting back in the window requires:

Honest evaluation. I don’t know about you, but I sometimes avoid the truth because it reveals that I am not where I want to be. Maybe you know what I mean. If I don’t step on the scale, I don’t have to admit that I’ve gained weight. If I don’t sit down to evaluate my goals, I don’t have to admit that I’ve drifted. But the only way to get back on track is to know exactly where you are. You must evaluate what is actually in the window so you can adjust your trajectory.

Measuring Success

June 21, 2025 Cathleen Zahradnik

“But my life is worth nothing to me unless I use it for finishing the work assigned me by the Lord Jesus—the work of telling others the Good News about the wonderful grace of God. Acts of the Apostles 20:24 NLT

How do you measure success? That’s an important question as you review your goal progress. Your perspective can encourage or discourage you.

When you are discouraged, you will not be motivated to keep moving forward. If you measure success by check marks next to goals achieved, you may find yourself discouraged more often than not. Are you discouraging yourself?

When you set a goal, you want it to be specific and measurable. However, we often set goals that are outside our realm of experience. You don’t know what you don’t know. That means your goal may turn out to be idealistic. We should set completion dates for our goals, but our information and experience are sometimes not enough to help us set realistic timelines. That may lead to discouragement.

Encouragement is a propellant. It is the wind in your sails and the gas in your motor. Encouragement is the needed fuel for this journey. Goal setting is not an exact science and goal achievement requires flexibility. You need a perspective that allows for that to properly measure success.

Keep an eternal perspective. You need to remind yourself that any goal you set is temporal. It only matters if it has impact that lasts beyond you.

How to Review Your Goals

June 14, 2025 Cathleen Zahradnik

“I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me. No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.” Philippians 3:12-14 NLT

How are you doing on achieving the goals you’ve set? It’s time to find out. It’s time to review your progress.

Reviewing your goal progress is an opportunity to celebrate, not just your progress, but your growth. So, how do you approach review in a way that encourages growth?

It starts with that perspective. Remember, it’s about the growth, not the goals. So, here’s a brief overview of how to do a goal review.

Set aside time. Reviewing won’t happen naturally. Since you are someone who wants to achieve, your tendency will be to focus on forward, check off the completed tasks and keep going. Looking back, reviewing, takes intentionality.

Review and Celebrate

June 7, 2025 Cathleen Zahradnik

“I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me. No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.” Philippians 3:12-14 NLT

Goals are not set-and-forget. Part of the goal-setting and accomplishing process is review. It’s important to stop from time to time and recognize what you have done toward your goal. Even if you aren’t as far as you hoped you would be, it’s important to celebrate where you are.

Just as you set goals in the beginning of the year or season, schedule times to review and celebrate. It’s important to make this a regular rhythm. And here’s why.

Reviewing reveals progress. Throughout my book-writing process it’s been easy to get caught in the weeds. There are many, many details in any big project. Truthfully, I tend to get overwhelmed at the beginning of large undertakings. I see all the details at once and don’t know where to begin.

Then, as I find a place to focus and get started, I never lose the awareness that there is still so much left to do. Although, I am making headway, it’s hard to acknowledge because of what is yet undone.

Give Yourself Credit!

May 31, 2025 Cathleen Zahradnik

“I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me. No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.” Philippians 3:12-14 NLT

Writing a book has been on my goal list for a long time. Often it seemed like I was making no progress at all. Yet, I was. Truthfully, God was doing much in me to deepen the message before it was ready to write. I understood the concept I was writing about, saying yes to God is the secret to a satisfying and fulfilling life, but I needed to do more living before the message was “ripe.”

Now that I am in the home stretch, I am not saying I have achieved “perfection” when it comes to living out that message, but I know that God has released it into the long-planned book. Before the end of this summer the book will be published. It’s hard to believe.

Why am I sharing this with you? Like me, you may be experiencing discouragement along your goal-accomplishment journey. You may feel like you are not making progress. It was easy for me to feel like I was failing because there was no book to point to. No manuscript or cover design. Only an outline and a few chapters. I did not allow myself to celebrate what I had done. I felt like a failure because of what I had not done.

Dear friend, learn to celebrate what you accomplish, not how much. We can get bogged down in comparisons. We compare our accomplishments to someone else’s or to our expectations of ourselves. Is what you expect of yourself reasonable?

Here are some questions to help you evaluate your progress.

This Summer!

May 24, 2025 Cathleen Zahradnik

Final edits and formatting are in process!

Thanks for your patience. I can’t wait to share it with you!

What to Do After a Busy Week: Rest

May 17, 2025 Cathleen Zahradnik

Dear Friend, this has been an exceptionally full week at work and we’ve had guests in our home. I’ve been doing exactly what I was supposed to do. But that left little time for writing. Now, it’s time to rest, and that is exactly what I am supposed to do. There is a time for everything.

Is it time for you to rest, too, my friend? Is God calling you to rest?

“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:

a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot,

a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a

time to weep and a time to laugh,

a time to mourn and a time to dance,

a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,

a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,

a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away,

a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak,

a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.

What do workers gain from their toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God.”

‭‭Ecclesiastes‬ ‭3‬:‭1‬-‭13‬ ‭NIV‬‬

September 12, 2026

This is Not Forever

“For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.” 2 Corinthians 4:17-18 NLT

As I tearfully opened the sodden boxes of our stored belongings, wondering what was ruined, a verse came to mind,

“Don’t store up treasures here on earth, where moths eat them and rust destroys them, and where thieves break in and steal. Store your treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal. Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.” Matthew 6:19-21 NLT

We were temporarily living with my parents, and our stuff was stored in Tom’s parents' garage. They had a plumbing issue in their bathroom above the garage, causing a leak that soaked several of our boxes and other items, including our mattress. We weren’t sure what was salvageable.

That period of time was already difficult. We were waiting for a job to open up and unsure how long that would take, how long we would be living with my parents, how long our stuff would be stored. Both sets of parents had been patient, loving, and gracious. There was no one to blame for the water damage. Sometimes things just happen.

But when that verse popped into my brain, it completely changed my perspective on going through the damage. The tears didn’t stop. There was some mourning and disappointment. But at the same time, there was hope. This was temporary. These things were just things. What really mattered was how I responded. I could choose an eternal perspective. I could choose to treasure Christ more than an earthly possession.

As it turned out, very few of our things were unsalvageable, and insurance more than covered anything that was lost. But the eternal perspective I gained is a treasure that I still carry. That simple shift helped me through the three and a half years of living in the in-between.