Create The Future

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I want to share one of my core, life-shaping beliefs with you: if you can envision a better future, whether for yourself or your sphere of influence, and you possess the power to bring it into being, then you have a moral obligation to do so. Why? Because it’s sinful to not act on these purposeful possibilities.

In the New Testament, James talked about the worthlessness of knowing the good we ought to do but not doing it. In fact, he said it is a sin (James 4:17). If opportunities to bring good into the world lie dormant in our minds and are never actualized, we are living inferior lives. Purposeful inaction hinders the progression of our world.

But what authority determines what is good? Who can say what is moral? My personal understanding of morality is premised on the Judeo-Christian worldview. Whether or not your worldview is the same as mine, I think that we can agree there is a difference between right and wrong, good and evil. 

Anyone who thinks one thing should be done rather than another has acknowledged a “moral ought.” This “ought to” is rooted in the idea that achieving a preferred outcome of some sort must be practiced in a moral context and ought to be done.

I want to challenge you to birth the God-dreamed futures — yours and others’ — that are latent within you. Countless lives are waiting to be changed. There are always new futures waiting to live — you just have to acknowledge that the future is in you now.

Most of us have some awareness of the future that is in us. We have moments when we catch our breath in wonder as we briefly glimpse possibilities vastly better than our past and present. We can tell something great — something grand — something from God is waiting just beneath the surface of our lives.

And we can bring this future fully to the surface. We can bring this future from the nebulous realm of the subconscious into the world of the conscious. We can move the mystery toward the intentional. We can partner with God to create the tomorrow He has dreamed for us — the future we were made for. We can create our God-inspired futures.

But God does not force these futures on us. He grants us the agency to choose whether to actualize them. We can cooperate with Him in the continuing act of creating the life and the world He envisioned.

I want this preferred future God planned for each of us and for those we love. I’m not only referring to future generations — opportunities that only our children or even their children will be able to experience. I am talking about imminent futures, eventualities that we can all witness sooner rather than later.

So, the future is in us. 

And not just any future. It is the future that God has planned for us and our world. 

We are responsible to bring this future out of the realm of the unseen and into the world of the seen and lived.

And we can. We can create a better future for ourselves and others. If we really want to.