“Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” Psalm 37:4

Desire is a longing for something or someone; it is a longing or a hope not yet attained. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set by the United Nations years ago are an example of the global goals set by the international community. These MDGs addressed eradicating extreme poverty, enabling all children to achieve primary education, promoting gender equality and empowering women, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, combating disease like HIV/AIDS, ensuring environmental sustainability and access to clean water and sanitation and creating a global partnership for development.

“The MDGs helped to lift more than one billion people out of extreme poverty, to make inroads against hunger, to enable more girls to attend school than ever before and to protect our planet,” the UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon recently explained.

But he didn’t finish there. “Yet for all the remarkable gains, I am keenly aware that inequalities persist and that progress has been uneven.”

“It’s true remarkable progress has been accomplished. Yet, around 1.5 billion people in conflict affected countries and on the extreme margins of society were unreached by the goals and unable to benefit from the tide that lifted their neighbours.” Source: http://www.wvi.org/united-nations-and-global-engagement/article/were-mdgs-success

Working towards global development goals is vitally important and urgent. We need to work together as a global community to increase prosperity for all. Each of us as individuals can make important little contributions by supporting the many, many charities that are working to elevate the living conditions of the poor. And when we do we become part of the solution to create hope for all.

The United Nations has now set what they call the Sustainable Development Goals and it is a most impressive set of 17 goals including things like:

NO POVERTY – End poverty in all its forms everywhere!

NO HUNGER – End hunger and achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.

GENDER EQUALITY – Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

QUALITY EDUCATION – Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.

AFFORDABLE CLEAN ENERGY – Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable modern energy for all

PEACE, JUSTICE AND STRONG INSTITUTIONS – Promote peaceful inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all, and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.

PARTNERSHIP FOR THE GOALS – Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development.

For the complete list of 17 goals go to: https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdgs

The sustainable development goals are the things God DESIRES:

PEACE, NO POVERTY, NO HUNGER, GENDER EQUALITY, QUALITY EDUCATION, AFFORDABLE ENERGY, PARTNERSHIPS FOR DEVELOPMENT ETC.

But these goals will not be accomplished without God! GOD MUST BE PART OF THE GLOBAL PARTNERSHIP OR THESE GOALS WILL NOT BE ATTAINED.

So if you DESIRE these things, then COMMIT TO PRAYING FOR THEM.

ASK God to assist the global leaders of the world and DO whatever you can personally to be part of the solution. I rejoice every time I receive a letter from my sponsor child in the developing world who thanks me for helping her dreams for education to come true. We can be part of the global development solution and we must all work together!

This is what God wills us to do:

“Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him and he will do this: He will make your righteous reward shine like the dawn, your vindication like the noonday sun. Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him; do not fret when people succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes. Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret–it leads only to evil. For those who are evil will be destroyed, but those who hope in the LORD will inherit the land. A little while, and the wicked will be no more; though you look for them, they will not be found. But the meek will inherit the land and enjoy peace and prosperity.” Psalm 37: 5-11

This is the promise of God and it will one day be fulfilled. The wicked will perish but those who commit to the Lord will enjoy PEACE AND PROSPERITY.

Let’s consider what a model of sustainable development might look like.

I have always been of the opinion that innovation, true sustainable innovation occurs when people think about problems and opportunities in an entirely new way.

I can understand how every elected politician is in power to help its constituents. But here’s a thought for you to consider that I believe reflects the Spirit of God and it is different from the traditional way people think.

To make the citizens in the developed world safer and more prosperous, we MUST make the citizens in the developing world safer and more prosperous.  This will stop the tide of illegal immigration, enabling everyone to prosper and remain in his or her native land.

In other words, what we do OUTSIDE our elected boundaries will affect what happens WITHIN our boundaries.

“So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” Matthew 7:12

My favorite economist, C. K. Prahalad (1941 – 2010) spoke persuasively about the “Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid”.   His view was that global prosperity required that we build up the fortunes of the poor, the people living at the bottom of the economic pyramid. This development strategy advocated for investment in the developing world in order to create bigger global economic markets which would translate into greater prosperity for all including more jobs, higher consumer incomes, more corporate revenue, more profit, increased corporate market valuations and rising stock prices.  C.K. Prahalad said, “Executives are restrained not by their resources, but by their imaginations. If we stop thinking of the poor as victims or as a burden and start recognizing them as resilient and creative entrepreneurs and value conscious consumers, a whole new world of opportunity will open up.”

As a global population we are all very dependent on affordable energy. God created the sun, wind and water to enable us to have renewable sources of energy but what gets in the way of these resources becoming the source of sustainable energy solutions is CAPITALISM. We live in a world where every capitalist wants to make money fast. Stock markets measure corporate results every three months and skeptical investors sell shares faster than you can blink when corporate revenue results take a downturn. A sustainable development solution for clean energy will require COOPERATION and NEW BUSINESS MODELS. Consider the opportunity for corporations to work together sharing intellectual capital, building shared intellectual property with government assistance, including seed capital and scientific know-how. Why can’t we do this? To do this we have to rethink the traditional competitive capitalistic model which involves individual companies financing large start-up investments with long pay-back periods.  We need to start conceiving of new creative, public-private partnerships to build new ecosystems that spawn new sustainable industries.

For many years I worked on the opportunity for technology to transform the way we learn at school and at work. I was once asked to put forth a futuristic vision for higher education and what I imagined (with the grace of God) was a cooperative digitally-enabled educational ecosystem. Consider the music industry as an example. Today people go to iTunes to build a personalized portfolio of music that involves songs from many different artists. The digital music player allows us to play our personalized portfolio anywhere we want. That’s in my opinion the future of education. It will be personalized, online and composed of many different educational providers that will cooperate to deliver world-class, lifelong learning.  That doesn’t mean we will shut down educational institutions.  I believe we will still have schools and teachers but the role of teachers will evolve to be facilitators of collaboration and understanding rather than content-delivers and text-books will become digital and we will be in a position to cater to different learning styles and aptitudes more precisely with technology as we make learning more fun and engaging.

We need to stop thinking about education as a regional issue and start thinking about it in global terms and when we do we will stop reinventing the wheel, we will reduce our costs and we will invest in reusable resources that will enable developing parts of our world to tap into a new digital, cooperative educational ecosystem with the benefit of digital connectivity and computing resources.

The urgency for a new global vision for education is that we have over 1.8 billion young people between the ages of 10 and 24 and 90 per cent of them live in the developing world.

“There are more young people in the world than ever before, creating unprecedented potential for economic and social progress.  Too many of these young people see their potential hindered by extreme poverty, discrimination or lack of information. But with proper investment in their education and opportunities, these young people’s ideas, ideals and innovations could transform the future.” http://www.un.org/youthenvoy/2015/04/10-things-didnt-know-worlds-population/

If we don’t invest in the developing world, we will fail to invest in our youth and if we fail to invest in the leaders of the next generation, what will the world look like?

If we fail, economic injustice will likely continue to breed social unrest, violence, war and illegal immigration as young people strive to migrate to more prosperous nations.

If we want peace in our world, then we must invest in education for all and prevent violent revolutions. The sad part about violent revolutions is that they often start with altruistic goals. People become convinced that violent coup d’états are the only way to oust the wrong leadership. But it’s important to note that violent revolutions reflect Satan’s way, not God’s way. So if anyone tells you that God wills for man to pick up arms and fight a violent revolution know that he has been deceived.

When Jesus was on earth He spoke of a time that is coming when man would kill man in the name of God.

Jesus said, “the time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God. They will do such things because they have not known the Father or me.”   John 17: 2-3

It’s important to understand that God wants a ‘peaceful revolution’ on earth. This peaceful revolution will turn the world around through the power of God’s Holy Spirit, eradicating poverty, hunger, gender inequality, injustice, enabling lifelong learning and PEACE and PROSPERITY for all.

This ‘peaceful revolution’ occurs when the Holy Spirit enters the hearts of mankind. The Holy Spirit breathes the inspiration we need to accomplish all our sustainable development goals. The Holy Spirit breathes truth and love enabling people to end wars and violence. The Holy Spirit enables us to make global commitments to help people suffering from wars and famines while increasing our global security.

So you may say all this is ‘imagination rooted in fantasy’ and I would say ‘it’s God’s imagination’ that will enable us to develop new sustainable ecosystems that will change the world.

We cannot succeed without God’s divine intervention!

So let’s unite to pray for peace and prosperity. Please join  The Mercy Movement that is stopping everyday at the Time Jesus died for us, 3pm (in our local time zones) to pray for the Holy Spirit to stop the forces of evil and build peace in our hearts and in our world. Remember the Passion of Our Saviour Jesus Christ at this time. Jesus died not for us to live at war and in poverty, but for all to live in peace, without threats of violence where our global prosperity would be shared for the benefit of all.

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11