3 Keys to Thriving in Your 20sExemplo

Chasing Your Dreams is Overrated

If you asked one hundred young adults what they were preparing to do for a living, I would be willing to bet that the vast majority of them would say something they never even conceived of when they were little kids. I once heard a speaker say that when he was little he wanted to be a sheet metal worker. Why? His dad was a sheet metal worker. He didn’t even know what a sheet metal worker was. He just knew that’s what his dad did, so that’s what he wanted to do when he grew up. Then he grew up, he said, and tried his hand at sheet metal work. Turns out he hated it. Some dreams die more quickly than others!

I have this vague recollection that when I was about three or four I wanted to be a garbage man. Why? Because I would sit on the back steps of my house in Brownsville, Texas, and watch the garbage truck come up the alley to pick up the trash behind my house, and there was a guy hanging off the side of it. I could think of nothing cooler when I was a munchkin than to get to hang off the side of a moving truck. My cousins and I would actually play “garbage men” on our parents’ parked cars in the driveway.

Whether it’s a dream job or a dream spouse or simply a dream life, we are often convinced in our youth that the aim of life is chasing the vision we have for ourselves in our imagination. The world around us is usually no help in this regard! We are told since we’re kids to keep dreaming and dream big and never stop chasing our dreams. Then we become adults and realize that advice is largely a load of hot garbage. In a world where everybody is chasing their dreams but very few realize them, we set ourselves and each other up for a grave disappointment.

Idolatry will always do this to us. When we orient ourselves around anything that isn’t God, put our whole energies into it and trust it to deliver to us peace and joy and satisfaction— things only God can truly and lastingly give—we will find ourselves miserable and disappointed and, in the worst cases, even depressed and despondent.

Don’t let the dream drive you. The apostle James gives a command applicable to this idea when he writes:

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will travel to such and such a city and spend a year there and do business and make a profit.” Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring—what your life will be! For you are like vapor that appears for a little while, then vanishes. Instead, you should say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” But as it is, you boast in your arrogance. (James 4:13–16a)

James is saying that we ought to avoid presumption about how our life is meant to go. This is what happens when we let dreams drive us and give ultimate meaning to our lives. We presume we know how our life is meant to be. We presume that our will is superior to God’s will. And the great thing is, many of us do get to achieve these dreams!

The best job in the world won’t be able to do for you what only Christ can do. The best spouse in the world won’t be able to meet the deepest needs of your heart like only Christ can. No dream, no matter how audacious, in reality matches the goodness of Christ.

I do hope you get to enjoy your dreams coming true. But many of you won’t. And that’s okay. Dreams are overrated. Shockingly enough, spiritual maturity is so often about watching (and letting) dreams die. And it’s okay to be sad when that has to happen. But it’s also a joy to realize that the most important things in life—namely Christ and the riches of His grace—cannot be taken from us. Orienting your life around Jesus will, in the end, provide so much more joy than the pursuit of anything or anyone else.