The Dangers of Trying to Read and Reach Ahead

“We're so busy watching out for what's just ahead of us that we don't take time to enjoy where we are.”
― Bill Watterson

Lewis, a young orphan inventor, is close to giving up on his invention. Little does he know that his invention will lead to more inventions and his work will change the world. Because he is on the brink of giving up, a young boy his age comes from the future in order to convince him to keep working on it. On this journey, he of course wants to know about his own future.

This is not an uncommon desire. Most of us dream and hope about our own futures. Especially people my age. We want to know where we are supposed to go to college, what to major in, who we are going to marry, what career we should pursue, where we should live, how much to spend on a car, and well, everything else. We are curious and we want to know what our lives will be like. Thinking ahead seems like a really good idea and people are generally applauded for thinking about their futures. And they should be. Having a plan for the future is admirable. But how much of our futures should we be reading ahead on?

There is no certain percentage of your time or a magical number of minutes a day you should or should not spend thinking about your future but you should remember to keep in mind the disadvantages to spending your present living in the future.

I have many dreams for my future. I look forward to someday leading people to Christ, starting a church, living in New Orleans, getting married, and raising a family. Some days I just want to be 30 already and get a move on my life. But then I stop and I think. What could I miss out on if I skipped to being 30? I would miss so much.

If we live in the future, we will miss out on our present. We cannot live our lives thinking "if only I had this I would be happy". Psalm 118:24 says "this is the day the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it". We say carpe diem (seize the day) but how many of us do? It's easy to slip into a dreamlike state and walk around and think about how great life'll be someday. What's hard is living in the moment because there are problems in our present. There's struggles in every season of our lives. They are always different but they are always there. News flash: your life you won't be perfect when you graduate high school, go to college, get married, have kids, get a promotion, or buy a new house. There will always be struggles. When we picture the future we don't tend to picture the obstacles. We don't think about the stress having kids would bring - only what a joy they would be. We don't think about the struggles of living away from home - only what freedom it would bring.

But guess what, there aren't just struggles in every season of our lives. There are also great strengths in every season. When we are in our dorms crying because we have got so much work we are growing and more importantly, we are also forced to rely on God's strength and not our own. When we get a job and are the low man on the totem pole we are able to gain new respect for those people and work harder towards our goals. With everything we do we are able to grow from it in some way and we are always able to lean on God's strength through hard times.

What I want you to know today is this: God has a beautiful story written for you but He isn't going to let you see it. It's better that way. Trust Him on that. And although its good to do some planning about your future it is more important to appreciate and live in the season you are currently in in your life. And when you find yourself longing for another's life season remember that there are struggles in their season too. You only see their fruit. Very rarely do you see the fight they went through to make it all happen. Embrace the good things happening in your life now and don't forget to seize the day.

“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.”
― Henry David Thoreau

A lot of the ideas and phrases in my post were from a wonderful sermon by Steven Furtick. I would encourage you to listen to it. You can find it here: http://elevationchurch.org/sermons/times-and-seasons