Honestly, there are days I wish I could go back in time and give my younger self some advice. Last week I wrote about the advice I would give to my teenage and twenty-something self.  This week I want to focus on my thirty-something self.

To my 30-something self I would say:  

 Develop a better life rhythm. 

I lived life at a very unhealthy pace.  I had no margin.  A wise man once said to me, “You know what the problem with you young guys is?  You have no margin.  You have no space in life to deal with problems when they arise, and you have no space to embrace opportunity when it presents itself.”  If I could go back and have a chat with my younger self, I would tell myself to create a better work, rest, and play rhythm. I would spend more time enjoying the simple pleasures of life like watching it rain, sitting on the beach and reading more books, just for fun.

Focus more on your marriage than your ministry.

I was very driven in ministry.  As a Youth Pastor I was successful and saw some pretty startling results.  The youth group I led grew 350% in 4 years. That is enough to make anyone’s head get big.  I  thought I was pretty amazing. When the founding pastor of the church that I served left, I was asked to fill the role of Senior Pastor. I was 28.  I took the job with the attitude: “I can probably do better than he did”.  I didn’t.

I was not as successful as Senior Pastor as I was as Youth Pastor at that church.  I was not happy with the results I was seeing, so I did what I had seen modeled for me my whole life—I worked harder and longer.  Not much changed in my ministry but a lot changed in my marriage.  I was neglecting my wife and my young daughter as I chased success.  It all came to a head when I chose an obligation over a family vacation.  All hell broke lose, quite literally.  My wife and I did not speak for three days.  We even used the “d” word.  That was a wake-up call.

I am happy to say that I spent the next seven years making some radical life changes, one of which was moving on from that church.  I realized that I could not develop a healthy marriage and family in that environment. Moving to Northbrook Church has been a game changer for my marriage (and for my health).  I am very thankful that I serve in a place that encourages staff members to prioritize healthy family life.

Pursue significance over success.

For a while, I thought I was going to become the next….”whoever.”  I would obsess over success, especially numbers.  I am ashamed to admit that success for me meant having a big church. To be fair, every conference I attended was at a large church, and all the speakers were pastors of large churches. I assumed that success in the ministry meant having a mega-church.  If I had a do-over, I would focus more on making a significant difference in the world and in the lives of people and less on how big the church was or how “cool” the facilities were.  I would spend much more time crafting sermons that were life-giving and creating environments that allowed for life transformation.

 Don’t worry so much about what people think. 

I am a people pleaser.  Sometimes that is good, other times it is really, really bad.  I hate to say “no” and I don’t like to disappoint people.  I want everyone to like me.  What I have discovered is that it is an impossible feat.  I have finally realized that I will never make everyone happy. I would challenge my younger self to give it your very best shot, love people, have compassion and go to sleep each night knowing that you did enough, regardless of what other people think.  One of my life verses is Micah 6:8 “Act justly, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.” I am now more concerned about living that way that making everyone happy.

Have more fun and lighten up.

I have a very serious side.  Somewhere along the way, I thought “Christianity” was synonymous with “you have to be serious all the time”.  Sure, there are times to be serious, but not all the time. I would laugh at myself more, in fact, I would laugh more in general. My kids have done a great job at lightening me up, and I am very thankful.  One of the values I have in life now is “have fun”.  People seem so uptight and get so upset at the smallest, dumbest things. I have been given this one life to live, and I want to live it fully. I don’t want to grow old and walk in anger and bitterness.

Next week I will conclude this series with “What I am telling my forty-something self.”

Do you ever wish you could go back in time? For many of us, the answer is probably “yes”. There are days that I wish I could go back and sit down with my younger self. Sometimes I think I would smack him and say, “What were you thinking?” Other times I would sit down with him and say, “Its ok, it all works out”, or, “You’re going to regret that decision later.” We all make mistakes; it is part of growing up. However, if I could go back in time and speak to myself this is what I would say:

To my teenage self, I would say…

Spend more time with your family.
As a teenager I was always on the move—going out, hanging around with my friends and occasionally getting into trouble (I know, hard to believe!). I don’t stay in contact with anyone from Jr. High or High school anymore, not one person. My family, however, is still there, supporting me, encouraging me and loving me. Now that I am in my 40’s, I do everything all can to get back to the place I ran from as a teenager. I wish I could have helped the younger me understand that the only people in my life that loved me unconditionally in my teens was my family.

Focus more on deep, life-giving friendships and less on girls and dating.
Yes, I admit it; I spent a lot of time chasing girls. I was always so worried about having a girlfriend…maybe it was the hormones. None of the dating relationships I had during my teenage years ended well, and most of the time it was a negative experience. If I had a do-over, I would spend much more time cultivating deep, rich friendships and would spend much less time worrying about dating. I would find people that were genuine, not worrying about how “popular” (what does that even mean?) they were, but how loyal, kind, and encouraging they were.

Do your homework well.
Schoolwork is not everything, but it is really important. I hated school. I never applied myself, and thus I struggled to get into college and was rejected from the college my parents wanted me to attend. I had a difficult first semester in college because I was not used to studying. During my teens, it did not seem all that important. The teenage years are a time of critical brain development, and I wish I had spent more time doing my homework and developing my intellect.

Don’t quit so easily.
I quit a lot of things when they got hard. I quit the scouts because it was hard, I quit baseball because the older I got the more it demanded. I joined the wrestling team and quit my Sr. Year. I wish I could tell myself to stick it out when things got hard. Life demands tenacity, stick in there.

To my “twenties” self I would say…

Make your faith a priority
I was not a follower of Christ for most of my teenage years. When I started following Jesus, it was rough. Like all the 20-year-olds I knew, I was focusing on my newfound freedom from my parents and I was “testing the waters.” Even as a Christian, I did some pretty dumb things and made some poor choices, many of which would have been avoided had I focused more on my faith and less on trying to be liked. I would tell my twenty-something self to develop a strong set of spiritual disciplines and seek God first. I would challenge my younger self to read deeply and ask lots of questions, not being satisfied with a status quo answer.

Find a mentor
Besides my dad, I did not have anyone who invested deeply in me. Older men and women spoke into my life, which I will always cherish, but I did not have anyone who made a significant investment in me. I had to figure a lot of it out on my own. I would advise my younger self to search out a man who would be willing to walk with me and mentor me in this critical time of my development. I would tell my younger self to find a seasoned pastor who could help me in the first years of ministry. Most Pastors drop out of ministry after the first five years; I did not; but I came close to dropping out after ten years. I needed someone to “speak life” to me.

Take better care of your wife.
In my twenties, my marriage was all about “me” and what I could get out of it. Honestly, I was selfish. My actions told my wife that she was  not that important. I was so focused on my success that she took a back seat to my ministry. The biggest mistake I ever made was when we lost our fist child to miscarriage. We had a doctor appointment to check our baby’s heartbeat. I also had scheduled a youth event that night at our church. We went to the appointment to discover our baby had no heartbeat; we had lost our child. We were devastated. We went home; I dropped my wife off, and I went to the youth event. I wish I could go back and smack that guy and say, “What were you thinking?!”  You need to be with your wife right now! I wish that were the only event like that, but there were others. I had to learn the hard way. I would tell my 20-year-old self, “Take better care of your wife, God called you to love her like “Christ loves the church.” Thankfully, I did learn from my mistakes

Since I now have more life experience I’ll continue on my next post with what I would tell my 30 something self and what I am telling my 40 something self.

“Never once in my life did I ask God for success or wisdom or power or fame. I asked for wonder, and he gave it to me.”

― Abraham Joshua Heschel

“Has my faith gone dull? I ask myself this question on occasion. It’s very easy to slip into a routine and allow everyday cares to get in the way of a life filled with wonder. Christianity can be reduced, if we are not careful, to rules, attending church once in a while and attempting to be a ”good person”.

** Let’s be honest, religion can be boring.**
Those are hard words to write considering the vocation I have chosen (or better said called to). More than once I have heard the phrase “church is boring.” As a kid, Sunday was the worst day of the week because we had to go to church. It was a drudgery to get up on Sunday morning and sit through a set of rituals that I did not understand and listen to a man pontificate about things I did not care about.

If we lose sight of the awe, mystery and power of God, religion is just a set of dry rituals and empty dogmas. How can we recapture the wonder of our faith?

Part of the problem is, we have fallen into a trap. We believe that everything can be explained. We need to know “why?” That is the dilemma of the western mind. We need to figure it all out, explain away the mystery of the cosmos, yet even the Apostle Paul knew that was not possible this side of heaven. He writes to the Corinthian church “Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.” (1 Corinthians 13:12 NLT).

Wonder is “radical amazement”. When was the last time you went outside at night, looked up and said “WOW!” The Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel once wrote “As civilization advances the sense of wonder declines. Such decline is an alarming symptom of our state of mind. Mankind will not perish for want of information; but only want for appreciation. The beginning of our happiness lies in the understanding that life without wonder is not worth living. What we lack is not a will to believe but a will to wonder.” How can we recapture the wonder?

First, it begins by looking at the world in a new way, seeing small everyday moments with fresh eyes. Last October I was driving down a country highway, and I noticed a tree, the leaves were ablaze with color. The Midwest in the fall is truly spectacular! Usually, I would just drive by, but for some reason, I pulled over, took a picture and then just stood there and looked at it, taking it all in. I thought to myself “I need to do this more!” God has created this beautiful thing for me to enjoy and I usually just pass it by, without notice. Something truly wonderful happens when we see each moment of our life as a gift.

Secondly, God is so big, great, mighty, awesome, loving and mysterious that I will never entirely figure him out, but I can enjoy an incredible and satisfying relationship with my creator. People that tell me they think they have this whole “God, Christian, Bible thing” figured out scare me. Can we figure God out in His totality? Does he even want us to? I love what’s recorded in the Old Testament book of Job “”Can you fathom the mysteries of God? Can you probe the limits of the Almighty? I have come to appreciate that there are some things about God I will never figure out, and honestly, some things don’t make sense to my finite mind, but I am ok with that. When someone asks me a hard question about God, and I don’t know the answer, I have grown comfortable with saying “I don’t know,” instead of making up some smart sounding but cheap answer. Being honest is so refreshing in an age when we hide behind how smart we think we are.

I have a few more thoughts that I will share in the next post. How do you keep “wonder” alive in your life?