What do you want to be when you grow up?

by Rebecca Kiser

“Our hearts ache but we always have joy. We are poor, but we give spiritual riches to others. We own nothing, and yet we have everything.” 2 Corinthians 6:10

All my life people have told me I could be whatever I wanted. “What do you want to be when you grow up?”, they asked (as if a 7 year old has any clue) and no matter what the answer, they were excited and told me I would excel at it. But now, I’ve apparently reached the age where I should know for sure what I want to do, but the pool of acceptable career paths seems to have shrunken. Now they tell me to dream big.
"Are you sure you don’t want to be a neurosurgeon?"
"An Aerospace Engineer?"
"A millionaire entrepreneur?"
No longer is my heart’s desire a good enough answer, I could always go bigger.

They make suggestions and tell me, “You’re gonna do big things!” and, “You’re gonna be successful.” What does that even mean though? What kinds of things are considered “big”? What is the definition of “successful”?

To the world, it seems like money is a huge part of both. If you tell someone you plan on going to school to be a nurse, there is a good chance they are going to ask why you don’t want to be a surgeon. If you say you want to be small-town journalist, they ask why you don’t want to be a New York Times best selling author. Doing something big seems to involve being so important that you don’t need to introduce yourself. Being successful seems to mean having a large bank account, two vacation houses, several cars, and a private jet on standby.

From what I’ve seen, you can have all the money you could ever want, and climb to the top of the corporate ladder, but yet never truly be successful.

So it seems like this world has it all wrong.
Money and fame are not the goal. 

We’re looking at the idea of doing something big through the eyes of the world, and we’re missing God’s intent for our lives. The notability of your life isn’t measured tangibly, it’s measured in the influence you have on the people you encounter.
You can work a minimum wage, customer service job your entire life and be way more successful than someone making seven figures as a celebrity. It doesn’t matter how many people you can reach, it matters how many people you can impact. Every time you interact with someone, no matter how small the interaction, you either bring them joy or take joy from them. You choose. That ratio is what determines if you have done something big with your life.

Showing people the love of Jesus is what makes you successful. It’s that simple.

The ability of your life to have any impact on this world or a single person in it is 100% derived from God’s love. 

In the For King and Country song, “The Proof of Your Love”, this concept is perfectly explained. In the first verse it reads, “If I speak with a silver tongue, convince a crowd but don’t have love, I leave a bitter taste with every word I say.” Millions can hear your voice but it has to have God’s love to make the audience listen to it, otherwise you are just noise.

The song goes on to recite 1 Corinthians 13:1-7, saying:
"If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God’s word with power, revealing all of his mysteries and making everything as plain as day, and if I have faith to say to a mountain ‘jump’ and it jumps, but I don’t love I am nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.”

You can be the biggest and most successful person ever by the world’s standards and yet never do anything noteworthy in the eyes of God. In the same way, you can be abundantly rich by God’s standards, do the biggest and most successful things, and yet be unknown and undercompensated to the world. As Christians, we aren’t looking at the same scale.

No matter what career path you choose, you will do big things because of who you are; because you are rooted in Jesus. Having a relationship with Him means you are a beacon of light with the capacity to radiate His love no matter where you are or what you’re doing. God has given us a spirit of power, love, and self-discipline; we are going places in this world!

Now as high school seniors about to walk across a stage, everyone is still asking what we want to be (as if a 17 year old has any clue). But rest assured my lovely friends, no matter what, we are going to do big things.