God has amazing plans for your life, even if you don’t know it. And you have the ability to do whatever God wants you to do—but you have to make good choices and prepare yourself. God’s plan for you, what you can be, is called your potential. Whether or not you make the choices to be all that God wants you to be is up to you. This week we’ll talk about what you can do to prepare for your future so that you can be the amazing person God designed from the beginning!
(Parents, this is the tenth in a series designed to help kids deal with identity and gender confusion by showing them that no matter what they like or what they look like or what they are good at, they are still boys and girls. When we try to push kids into filling stereotypical roles, we’re often the ones creating the confusion that they are forced to find a way to live with. I do this without making any mention of sexuality whatsoever.)
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Hi! I’m Miss Tyler and welcome to another episode of Context for Kids where I teach you guys stuff most adults don’t even know. If this is your first time hearing or if you have missed anything, you can find all the episodes archived at contextforkids.podbean.com, which has them downloadable, or at contextforkids.com, where I have transcripts for readers or on my Context for Kids YouTube channel.
Parents, all Scripture this week comes from the Miss Tyler Bible, which is the Christian Standard Bible tweaked a bit to make it a bit more clear for kids.
You are an amazing fireball of potential!
Human beings change, all the time. In fact, the skin on your body right now won’t be there next month—it will all be brand new skin! Isn’t that wild? Where does all that old skin go? Wouldn’t it be hilarious if we were like snakes and we shed our skin once a month and there were like dried out people husks all over the place? But fortunately, that isn’t how God made humans, as our skin comes off very slowly every single day so that we don’t usually notice. But, that wasn’t the kind of change I was talking about. Every day, we are changing from the people we were into the people we will be. Tripping and falling is normal for a toddler, but if you are racing in the Olympics, it is very out of the ordinary because an Olympic athlete has tremendous control over their own body—a lot more than me. My arms are always bruised from banging into things! In the same way, the people we are when we are babies changes a lot by the time we are in school, and we change even more when we go out and get jobs and do all the stuff that is part of the normal life of grownups. We can’t stay the same person forever because we need experience and abilities to do those things that only adults have—they couldn’t do those things when they were kids either. No one can.
When you are little, you cry and scream when you want things because you can’t talk yet, but when you learn to talk, you are expected to become a person who uses their words to tell people what you need or what you want because you aren’t babies anymore. As you get even older, you develop the ability to understand that being told no isn’t the end of the world. You learn to wait. You learn patience. You learn self-control. You learn to care about other people and not just yourself. You learn that in life we don’t always get what we want and when you get to be my age, you will look back and be really glad that you didn’t get everything you wanted. A lot of what we want when we are kids isn’t healthy, good, or even reasonable. Wouldn’t it be awful to be a baby forever? Or a toddler forever, or a five-year-old forever?! Or even a teenager forever? Did any of your parents faint when I talked about you being a teenager forever? Part of being a human being is the challenge of growing up and becoming big and able to do things for ourselves. It’s about our bodies and our minds growing stronger, discovering what our talents are, and coming up with plans and goals about what we can do with our lives.
Right now, you can’t control everything about your life because you haven’t seen enough of the world to make wise decisions and there are a lot of things that you legally can’t do yet. Ten-year-olds can’t drive the car but if they are tall enough they can drive a riding lawn mower. Or ride a bike. Just because you can’t do everything doesn’t mean that there isn’t a whole lot that you can do. Some things, you might already be better at than a lot of adults. There is a really good chance that you can paint and draw better than I can because I am really awful at it and always have been. The one thing in your life that you do have control over is how you act and how you treat others, and you and only you can decide that you want to get better and better at doing things that make God happy. Things like driving the car and having your own place and having a job seem really cool now but they aren’t the biggest part of what makes you, you!
And who you are will change throughout your whole life. You will never be stuck so long as you keep growing and changing. Nothing in your life lasts forever. Tomorrow can bring new opportunities to do better, and to learn something, or to accomplish something, or learn to treat people more kindly. So, I guess my question right now is, when you think about what you will do with your life as you get old enough to make your own choices, what are the important things that you want to focus your life on? It’s okay if you don’t know yet. When you think of your future, are you thinking about what kind of job you want? Not everyone gets married and has kids but everyone has to eat, and we all need to serve God—but it is up to each person to decide what that is going to look like. Some choices are ours to make and some aren’t. Maybe we are too small for some things or too big for others. Maybe we want to be singers but can’t even carry a tune in a bucket. We might be too clumsy for sports or for dancing. Personally, I wanted to learn languages, but God had to finally tell me to focus on something else because He didn’t make my brain smart in that way.
An important part of planning our futures and shaping our own identity is by being honest with ourselves about what we are and aren’t good at. Is it something we can get better at? Or not? When it comes to how we treat others and how we love God, the answer to that is always a great big yes. We can always do better. I am in my fifties, and I am still learning to do better. And when it comes to getting to know more about what we like and what we are good at, we can always do that too. With all the years I have spent studying the Bible and history and theology and all that, I still learn something new every single day. No matter how much I know, there are always people out there who know a lot more than I do. The same is true for whatever it is you want to do.
My son Matthew is a grown up now, but he has wanted to be a police officer since he was two years old. As he got older and his plans didn’t change, we had to start looking at what he would need to do and what kind of person he would need to become so that he would have the knowledge he needs and so that he would be able to be a police officer that God can be proud of. So, it’s very important that he understands what it is to be fair, helpful, kind and able to control his temper. He has to be the kind of person who cares more about saving others from danger than being safe himself. But no one starts out being that kind of person! That’s something you have to work on your whole life. Although other people can usually get away with not having to be that brave, Matthew doesn’t get to run away or look the other way if one person is hurting someone else. He also has to understand that not everything that police officers do is going to be right, so he needs to be wise about what he does and doesn’t do and about how he looks at people who are different and about the assumptions he makes. And he doesn’t only want to be a policeman, but someday he wants to be a detective so he is in college getting his degree in criminal justice and criminology. No job in the world is just a job where we can do what we want. All jobs take special knowledge and need people who are behaving properly.
Hopefully, you have people in your life who know how to be honest with you but also know how to encourage you. Oftentimes, the people around us can see our talents and strengths better than we can—and sometimes all they can see is what they want us to be. When I was growing up, I lived near a very famous family for a while with a whole lot of kids and the parents wanted them to be movie stars and they would move all around whenever one of the kids was working on a movie or a television series. One of them went to school with my brother Travis and another one went to school with my brother Adam. And the one in between their ages has even won an Academy Award. But they never had a choice with what they were going to do with their lives. I didn’t ever even meet either of them, so I don’t know if they wanted to act or that’s just what their parents made them do. But I have also known young people who were in sports that they hated, but because their mom or dad was good at it, they had to. Or sometimes there is a family business and so someone becomes a lawyer or a doctor or a soldier or a preacher or a rabbi just because that’s what they were told they were going to be. And so, they didn’t get to make their own choices about their identity, and sometimes they end up being really good at that thing but are miserable doing it. I think the worst example are the people who only became ministers because they were expected to—but God is the one who decides who is and is not going to be called to do that.
Sometimes, we parents, teachers, and relatives really have good intentions, but we push too hard because we are worried about you guys. Sometimes, we didn’t accomplish certain things, so we want you to. Sometimes, we forget that when you grow up, you have to live with the consequences of the choices you do and don’t make—and not us. We sometimes have a hard time remembering when we were your age, how our opinions weren’t really taken seriously and although some of our ideas were very silly, it would have been nice to at least be able to talk about them. Sometimes, we didn’t tell grownups because we figured there was just no point. My son Andrew, when he was growing up, every month or so he would want to do something different with his life. And so, we would talk about it. And we would have some good conversations. And then he would latch on to another idea, and we would talk about that. Come to find out that all of this bouncing around was because he didn’t really understand all the options available to him and now, he is seeing the possibility of being a stay-at-home dad! Because I know him so well, I know he would be better at that than any of the other things he has been interested in—except for welding, he’s an amazing welder. So, guess what? I bought him some cookbooks and we are having serious talks about parenting and taking care of a home.
If you are a boy, have you considered all the types of jobs that used to just be done by women? Like being a schoolteacher, a nurse, or a librarian? One of my best friends spent time in the Navy and now he is a really great nurse! If you are a girl, have you considered all the types of jobs that used to only be done by men? Like construction, being a forest ranger, or a firefighter? My mom was an EMT and a firefighter for many years. Dads can stay home and moms can work. My son Andrew’s girlfriend is very ambitious and clever and is getting her college degree so that she can go into business, and because it is important for him to not have his kids in daycare, he wants to stay at home with them if they get married and have kids. And there is nothing wrong with either of those things. God gave them both the talents and the temperaments to do those jobs well.
But more important than your job is how you commit your life to God and make plans to become the kind of person whom He is proud to call one of His image-bearers. No matter what job you end up doing, no matter where, He wants people to see what He is like while you are doing that job. And that takes a lot of prayer, planning, and hard work. When we have Jesus as our Savior, Master, and Lord—when we make Him the boss of us—we can’t just do whatever we want however we want it. Because we have been given a new life, a new life that lasts forever and even after we die, and new hearts, it becomes our job to make the world into a more loving and wonderful place for everyone else. Now, I can tell you that the people around me got a better life just because I was being less of a jerk than before—and I am always needing to keep growing in love, joy, peacefulness, patience, kindness, trustworthiness, gentleness, and self-control. But as we become more loving, we start to notice that things are very bad for other people and the Spirit of God tells us that we have to help them.
For Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, that meant leaving the safety of his home in New York and traveling south to help Black Americans march and protest for their rights to be treated the same as White Americans. You see, he grew up in Germany and was even arrested by Hitler’s Gestapo and sent to Poland, and he had to escape from there to America. So, he knew exactly what it was to be hurt just because of the color of your skin or to have people want to kill you just because of who your parents were or how you look. He wasn’t planning to be a Civil Rights Activist in America, but he did work very hard on being an excellent person who loved people and loved God. Because he worked on himself and did what he could to prepare for his future, when he saw Black Americans being persecuted and oppressed, he knew just what he needed to do. God had been preparing him, all his life, to be able to help others. He had no idea what God’s plans were, but because of everything he had experienced and because of how God made him so brave and loving, when the time came, he was ready to act!
When Rabbi Heschel was born, like you, he was an amazing fireball of potential. No one knew exactly what he would do or who he would become. He played with other children, went to school and learned about the Bible. He ate his vegetables and brushed his teeth and played with sticks and did all the normal kid things. And as he grew, he changed. He changed because of experiences—like being a child living in Germany during WWI, growing up after the war when everyone was very poor, learning about the world as he got older, going to the synagogue every Sabbath, and going to the university. His identity changed in many ways as he grew older but also stayed the same. He was always Jewish, from the day he was born until he died. Because he was Jewish, he saw things in a certain way and did things that not everyone does. He dressed differently. He worshiped the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He was also German, but that changed when the Germans began to hurt and even kill people for being Jewish. When he died, he was an American. He became educated and was a Rabbi, a religious leader, and the writer of many wonderful books. He was married and had a family. And when he was an older man, he marched with Dr Martin Luther King Jr to help make things in America right for everyone.
His identity, who he was, was based on all of those things together and based upon the choices he made as he lived. But as a kid, he wasn’t all that different from any of you. He started out with potential but unless he made certain good choices, he wouldn’t ever be all that he could be. The world would be a very different place if he decided to race cars instead of studying to become a Rabbi. If he had built model planes instead of writing books, my life would be very different because he has taught me a lot. If he had decided to be selfish and stay safe at home, white Americans wouldn’t have seen the very white Jewish Rabbi arm in arm with some of the great civil rights workers of the day; Black people and White people working together as equals so that what happened in Germany wouldn’t happen here too. At the end of his life, Rabbi Heschel was a great many things but if you asked his mom or his dad when he was born how they thought his life would turn out, they couldn’t have guessed at very much of what actually did happen. He had potential, just like every child does, but without making choices to be a certain kind of person, we’d never even know his name.
Of course, there are other people with a lot of potential who don’t do right things. They make evil choices and do terrible things and sometimes the whole world suffers. The Bible is full of people with amazing potential who were selfish, cruel, murderous, liars, and worse. Each person who chooses to do bad could have chosen to do good. For some people it is harder than others to make good choices if their homes are not safe places to be, but when people grow up, they can see that there is more than one way to live their lives. Someone who was hurt growing up can decide that they never want anyone to feel as bad as they felt, or they might decide that it is good to be the one doing the hurting instead. But when we are born, along with the potential to do bad and to live selfishly, there is always the choice to do good to others. When we choose to do bad instead, we are wasting lives that God meant to be a blessing to everyone around us. I wasted my potential for a lot of years, more than half my life. Sometimes I wonder what my life would have been like if I had made different decisions but it just doesn’t matter because there are no do-overs. All I could do, once I figured out that I was wasting my life, was to start living differently.
I gave some things up. I started doing other things. I began to look for small ways to do kind things for others. I thought about how I could do things differently to make people’s lives less stressful. I taught my dogs not to bark all the time so that my neighbors could enjoy being in their yards. I played my music more quietly. I put my cart away at the store so that the cart returners wouldn’t have to go and get my cart from across the parking lot. I started small because of something that Jesus said once, in Luke 16:10–“Whoever is trustworthy with small things is also trustworthy in big things, and whoever isn’t honest about little things is also dishonest about big things.”
The verse is all about potential, and our potential changes when we make decisions that are good or bad. Someone who lies about breaking a cup sure won’t tell the truth about putting a dent in the car. But someone who is honest about crashing the car won’t even think twice about admitting that they broke a cup because that is much easier to admit! And when they do the right thing, when you do the right thing, your potential builds in the right direction and you become more like Jesus. When you become more like Jesus, the lives of everyone around you get better and better. A lot of talking about potential and doing something about it, to make sure that you are all God made you to be, comes down to whether you care about others. When we don’t care about other people, it won’t matter to us to steal, or lie, or hurt them. And if that happens then we will develop the identity of bad people who do bad things—it won’t matter if we think we are actually good people because what we do will tell the truth about who we are. But, if we understand our potential to become more and more like Jesus, and if we decide we want that because we love and care for others, then we will live entirely differently and we will keep changing for the better, so that our potential becomes our truth, our reality. We can become the people that God knows we can be when He looks at us, and when He created us.
Every amazing adult started off as a crying baby, who grew into a clumsy toddler, who learned their ABC’s and 123’s, who helped their parents around the house, made mistakes, had friends be mean to them, failed tests sometimes, maybe got fired from a job—you know, lived entirely normal lives. What made them live up to whom God wanted them to be was learning about what God wants and then making decisions to do it, little by little, year after year. They learned to be trustworthy with the small stuff and so God trusted them with the big stuff later. But we all start in that exact same place and go through the same sorts of experiences as children, and we all have choices to make, and futures to plan, all while listening to God and paying attention to the opportunities He gives us, always trying to head in a good direction without taking shortcuts that would lead us into trouble. So, all of those amazing people? They were pretty much just like you at one point. I love you. I am praying for you. And I can’t wait to see where your potential and your good choices will lead you!