Do Something With Your Life!

"Our greatest fear should not be that we won't succeed, but that we will succeed at something that doesn't matter." 
-Dwight L. Moody

The worst question you get as a senior in high school is only bad because it's so heavily repeated: "What are you going to do after you graduate?" That question got so annoying I found a way to answer it in four words.

I now work with high school students and I can see the pressure building up on them: coaches, teachers, parents, and pastors lay expectation after expectation on them in hopes that they'll actually do something with their life.

But I'm finding that I don't really worry about my students' accomplishments all that much. I hope for them to succeed, but I'm not really banking on that. What I'm actually worried about is that whatever they end up doing will end up not mattering to the world.

I want these kids to go into business. I want them to play sports. I want them to go to college or not go to college. I want them to work for a living. I want them to get jobs they love. I want them to get married. I want them to raise kids and I want their kids to have the opportunities they had.

But so much of life is not about what you do, but how you end up doing it.

Moody is hinting at something; In the end, business is not about making money, it's about serving society. And sports is not about celebrity, it's about experiencing the wonder of corporate play and building character. Making art is not about the artist, but about making the world aware of the unspeakable. And raising kids is not about fulfilling your dreams, it's about their hearts and future adulthood.

I don't give students another thing to be successful at, I give them the gospel, which redefines success.

Now with Christ, you can do anything you want; you just need to make sure you're doing it in relationship to Him. Therefore, anything you do - from waiting tables to leading a company - can be done as St. Paul said, "for the glory of God." You can do a lot of work for Christ, but it's more about doing work in Christ. I have learned these things to be quite different.

Jesus is not another thing in your life to be "good at," but rather He is the way to the rest of your life. The gospel makes things matter. Success is no longer defined as being on top and having everyone serve you, it now becomes entirely about serving all people.