How to see the future:

I got a chance to sit down with a couple of my high school students tonight. Originally, my plan for the evening was to eat something and fall asleep as hard and as fast as possible. I'm glad my plans changed because I got to have a really good heart to heart with them. They shared their concerns about the future and how daunting it is to feel pressured into knowing what you want to do for the rest of your life at 16. Take the jump to read my thoughts.

Also, I'll be interposing pictures of what people thought the future would look like in the 1950's. If you think they add some depth or meaning that's awesome, but I'm just doing it because they make me chuckle.



When I was 16 I wanted to be a professional wrestler. I made video tapes of me wrestling in the living room with my friends. I was looking into a school to teach me how to wrestle. So, understand when I say I am completely unqualified to do any kind of life coaching.

That said, I did have a life altering interaction with the God of the universe and it's affected my way of thinking so much that I can give very modest insights based on what He's shown me. One of those things is that if you are genuinely seeking to be more like Christ you cannot make a wrong choice.  Does that mean we can't sin if we're genuinely following Christ, nope.  I'm just saying that the person being subservient to His will won't desire sin as readily and probably won't meditatively make sinful decisions. Also, God has revealed His will to us, there is freedom to work within the guidelines He set up.

The other thing that we talked about was a genuine desire that they have to impact the world they were going to be working in for Christ.  One of the students even thinks he may have the desire to work in a church setting, but made it very clear, he loathes the idea of doing youth ministry.  This really laid out the weird disconnect between being a minister and doing ministry.  I just wanted them to know that we are constantly on mission and our love for people will never be more than our love for God.  Our mission is contingent on our passion for God and that's it.

I think fostering a sense of missions being a lifestyle will help teens and people in general see everything as ministry not just what happens in a church or at a church function.

I love the teens in my group and these moments.

PS.  A good book that I've read online snippets of is Do Something.  I might actually buy it for you guys if you read this.