Staying out of trouble vs. Walking in your calling

Steven Furtick (www.stevenfurtick.com) of Elevation Church in Charlotte, NC posted a great blog recently.  Actually, he has posted a lot of great blogs recently but this last one really hit me hard enough that I decided to share.  Enjoy.

Staying out of trouble vs. Walking in your calling Posted: 10 Jun 2010 02:00 AM PDT I have a deep passion to see this present generation of students have a God-sized impact on the world. In my opinion, there has never been a group in history with more potential to be used by God to further His Kingdom. They have the resources. They have the gifting. And most importantly, they have the audacity to believe that God can actually use them to accomplish the impossible. Which makes it all the more aggravating that we’re losing this generation. Some think it’s their lack of commitment. Others think it’s because they lack structure and are just too wild. Each of these suggestions places the problem on the students. I think the problem lies with us. We haven’t given them something worthy of giving themselves completely over to. Instead we’ve settled for simply trying to keep them out of trouble. We are training them to be good little boys and girls. God did not raise them up for that. He wants them to be great men and women of God. He has placed a calling on their lives. Collectively and individually. And this is what we need to spend all of our time and energy communicating. Students do not need us to be behavioral modification specialists. They need us to demonstrate what it looks like to walk in your calling. The vision we are casting before them is too small. The challenge we are presenting isn’t great enough. I feel that the greatest peril in modern Christianity relating to youth culture is that we are under challenging this generation of students with an anemic alternate version of the Gospel that isn’t worth keeping your pants on for. We lull them to sleep with do’s and don’ts instead of waking them up to the God-given potential inside of them. The truth is you can stay out of trouble but fall short of your calling. You can stay out of trouble, but live a life of little impact or significance. When a student comes to understand that God has something for them far greater than sex, alcohol, and the pursuit of short-lived high school popularity, everything changes. These things lose their attractiveness. And it has nothing to do with staying out of trouble. Their motivation is that they would not dare risk the glorious destiny God has for them by wasting their time on anything that could short-circuit it. Students (and all of us for that matter) don’t need rules to live by. They need a calling to live for.