<< In Pursuit of the Good Life | three >>

Young people feel pressure to change the world for Jesus, and this is actually keeping them from acting to change the world (see post one).

Yes, they feel such world-changing pressure, but they don't know how to do it. This means that they are not only often living much more inactive than they could but also feeling purposeless (see post two).

However, these ideas aren't coming from crazy sources: hints of them are actually found within the pages of the Bible itself.

Isn't that how these things often go? Just enough truth is packed into the powerful punches of thoughts and makes for a pile of thoughts that starts to lean the wrong way (and lead the thinker down the wrong path).

Truth comes out: truth is being twisted and forming the basis for a lot of these thoughts.


"For we are God's masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago" (Ephesians 2:10). Shouldn't we have to find all of these good things that God has us to do? What if we don't find them? Then aren't we wasting our lives? So we'd better hurry up and find them and do them so we can do the next and the next so the world can be changed more and more.

"And He said to them, 'Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature'" (Mark 16:15). We need to go into the world with the message that can change the world. We've been commanded to do this! What are we waiting for? Is our not going (since we've been commanded) disobedience even if we are doing other good things? We need to finish up and go, go go.

"I can do all things through him who strengthens me" (Philippians 4:13). We've been commanded to go. There's good things in store for us to do. We can do anything through Him. Why are we holding back and not going, doing, changing the world?


"Then Jesus said to all of them, 'If anyone would come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it" (Luke 9:23-24).  We must surrender everything. What if we are still holding back? Is He just waiting for us to surrender more? to surrender more deeply? What if we don't know how?

"More than that, I count all things as loss compared to the surpassing excellence of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ" (Philippians 3:8). What if we still feel torn? What if we still want these things though we want Christ, too? How can we choose them more?

Don't get me wrong, I believe that striving to make a difference in our world for Jesus is a very good thing. In fact, I think acting from our faith is healthy and a sign that our faith is real (James 2). Surrender is so necessary! We need less of us and more of a knowledge of God.

Bible verses tell us the truth of difference making and a surrendered lifestyle. However, twisted, they can twist our view of who we are, who others are, and what it means to live a life following after Jesus.

This is what makes this pressured, purposeless situation all the more dire: it is finding a foundation in a twisted version of scripture.

<< In Pursuit of the Good Life | two >>

Our three clear, glass plates sat onto the grey-brown dining center tables in the back room. We were across from the windows, and I was looking for windows into the issues of my mind and heart.

I'd met both of them early last year: one from the friend of a friend of an art friend, and the other the friend of the first. Fast forward a year and a half, a Cold Stone honors seminar run and Student Government campaigning cookies later, we'd learned more about life as we did it together.

"Do you think you, or people you know, have experienced this immense pressure to change the world? How do you think it affects them?"

She shifted her fork against the sun-yellow pineapple and grass-green kiwi. She spoke of motives and missions, guilt and comfort, co-opts and shame cover-ups. One word stuck out amid the piles of discomfortable realities.

"I think our peers feel purposeless."

Purposeless. 

Purposeless, amid a reality of the purposeful life that we are supposed to be living: the pressure to live the sold-out "good life."

Reality is, I don't think this is because we do not know about a purpose: to know God and make Him known, to not waste a single minute of our life in pursuit of this sold-out good life.

I think that what we are actually missing is practicals.

• We want to change the world, but sometimes we have no idea how to tangibly get started.
• We want to be all-in for Jesus, but we see how often we are sinful and sometimes can't seem to see how to ever accomplish anything big.
• We are obsessed with the big, but we see that our life often isn't big; we don't know how the smalls matter or how to "make them matter."

We are being robbed of many pleasures of the dailies, of knowing God and making Him known as we are known by Him. This means we are getting caught up in our own frustration at our lives, and our presence is being taken out of the present as we forget to rely on the Presence.

<< In Pursuit of the Good Life | one >>

I don’t want to waste my life.

Sitting on the wooden steps in my Illinois home, I faced the front door and seemed to face the door to the rest of my life. I held the fair-trade, polka-dotted, crème paged red journal as my Piglet pen recorded my words: “Tomorrow, you’re going to be eleven. You’ve probably lived about an eighth of your life, Deborah. What do you have to show for it?”

I didn’t want to waste my life. I wanted to change the world.

At age twelve, I proceeded to read bestselling, Christian “make the most of your teen years” Do Hard Things in reformation of my un-productive ways. I needed to know how to make the most of the teen years before I even reached them.

As I grew, wasting my life stopped even being an option and living sold-out, “big” for Jesus became an obligation. I over-analyzed everything in a desperate attempt to just find God’s will.

Because if I really believed in Jesus, wouldn't that affect more of the way I lived? If I truly grasped I'd been given access to the Holy Spirit Himself and every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, shouldn't I be doing more (John 14:26; Ephesians 1:3)?

Thus, my chronic illusion developed: I need to single handedly change the world (and do this for Jesus).

But I never felt like I found God’s will but only self-frustration, fear of any action (because it could be the wrong one), and a life of dissatisfaction at my inability to figure out how to fix my failures.

I started asking last summer. Was I the only one who’d developed this unhealthy, out of proportion pressure to find God’s specific will for my life and change the world?

Apparently not. Responding to my thoughts about this on the Do Hard Thing’s “Rebelution” blog, my peers spoke out.

“Yes, I am also obsessed at not wanting to waste my life… In fact that is my biggest fear. Living on this earth and not impacting it in some way. I feel all this pressure to make a difference and to be productive in my teen years … [it can] make us feel like we are on stress ride” (Bekah14).

“I’m 17, and I feel like I’ve wasted so much time that could have been used productively” (Andrew).

“In the first years as a teen I had really great ideas, and I still feel a bit guilty sometimes that I didn’t do something big, or that I’m not doing something big” (MusicalRagmuffin).

“Just under a month ago, I turned 18… I’m just realizing that my teenage years are almost over and I feel like I’ve wasted them. And I don’t want to feel the same way when I get to the end of my 20’s, 30’s and so on … I do strongly feel the pressure to not waste my life” (Sarah A).

“Distorted (and enormous pressure) pretty much sums it up for me!” (Haven Asnip).

Apparently this problem really is bigger than just me. Church-raised and indoctrinated young people are feeling it: a distorted pressure to change the world.

If we could only find God’s will and then act completely sold out for Him. If only we would be more productive in our obedience and impact all our spheres of influence. If only we wouldn’t waste our lives.

Sometimes we need to hear the good messages to surrender more, do more for Jesus and be sold out. However, apparently some of us are taking it too far, and it hasn’t taken us very far in actually living productive lives.

Maybe letting our desire to “change the world” morph into an obligation to do so is the very way we keep ourselves from doing just that.