Your Future, Too!

As a teenager, and really from age 5, I spent almost all of my time in the hope that I would one day be a “great swimmer.” I ate, slept, lived and breathed sports of all kinds, with swimming as my life’s centerpiece for 14 years. I swam about 7,000 miles in the hope of achieving my goals. My father, mother and uncles were all athletic and this was a natural pursuit for nearly everyone in our family.

While I was a relatively shy young person, made somewhat worse by being tall—which I felt caused me to “stick out”—I was driven to achieve within the arena of sports. Because I was painfully thin for so many years, I had to work harder to even be average during this period.

I began practicing an extra two times a day in my sophomore year of high school, on top of the regular after-school team workout—first at the YMCA before school and another non-swimming “land” workout in the evening. I also increased my practicing from six to 10 months a year, from that point only taking off one month in the spring and one month in the fall. I was simply consumed with the sport from this time forward, as my strength and skill increased.

At 17-and-a-half years old, in the summer before my senior year, all of this changed overnight. God virtually knocked me over in a sudden stroke. He began to reveal to me what I had given no thought to, even for a single moment, prior to that time. I learned that there was a Supreme Purpose for my life, and that it was infinitely greater than the achievement of the very greatest athletic goal, however defined.

I was dumbfounded! I could not believe how exciting my future could be and was amazed that I could be privileged to receive this marvelous knowledge, completely unknown to all my friends and acquaintances. While I continued swimming through my senior year, almost overnight I found that the old pursuit became of little importance. I had no real interest left in going on to a college swimming career.

I did find, however, that I could now use the same drive in studying the multitude of literature that I was receiving. It explained and revealed fascinating truths hidden within God’s Word in a way that I had never heard in the Presbyterian church I attended during my youth.

As my eyes opened to incredible new horizons, I saw that I had been born with an innate potential that involved much more than whether I was a good athlete or good swimmer.

I came to understand that I had been born for the sole purpose of God reproducing His character within me, so that I could be added to His divine, spirit Family. I learned that my destiny involved qualifying to rule cities, which would occur at the establishment of the Kingdom of God.

Over the course of the next year, I came to realize how truly marvelous was the gift that God was offering to those who put Him first.

Most people do not know how to measure success, or how to know when they are truly reaching their potential. Success is generally thought to be reaching great achievement, such as patenting important inventions, creating beautiful paintings or sculptures, developing one or more successful companies, becoming a multi-millionaire, or, as I had hoped, becoming a “superstar” athlete. Certainly, great military generals and political figures are also thought to have reached their incredible human potential. Yet none of these things come remotely close to what God has offered.

Your ability and mine to achieve in these endeavors are probably not nearly as great as those who are deemed to be “the great” of this world. But this makes no difference because the potential that God has in store for those who seek and serve Him is infinitely beyond what the greatest “achievers” of this world could possibly hope for in their chosen fields.

Think deeply about what can lie ahead for YOU, if you are different from your peers—if you focus on what they cannot see because it has not been revealed to them.

Young people in God’s Church, talk with each other about your future. From time to time, discuss God’s Plan together. You can do this by phone, email or at Feasts and Sabbath services.

Do not be afraid or embarrassed to talk about the most important subject in your life—how you will spend eternity. Do not let the empty, trivial, meaningless pursuits of the vast majority around you choke and derail your future.

Remember, others have not been shown what you have. This means you are responsible, because special, privileged information—biblical knowledge—has been revealed to you. You will be held accountable for it.

Take—find—time to read the booklet How Religion Deceives You About Your Incredible Future. It is but one chapter in the book The Awesome Potential of Man, which you may wish to read or review regularly until the age of baptism. Ask God to open your mind to the excitement—the thrill!—of seeing how colossal is His purpose for you, and that nothing else in this life could even remotely compare to it!