Who is your hero? Is it Spiderman, Batman, Superman, Cat Woman, or the Ninja Turtles?  Do you have a favorite hero who is an actor/actress or musician?  Like Brad Pitt, a favorite band, the actors/actresses on Twilight who played Bella, Edward, and Jacob, Ashton Kutcher, Kobe Bryant, Labron James, Brett Favre, Oprah, Jay Leno, or even a UFC fighter?

Who do you idolize?

I have to be honest with you; sometimes I find myself making heroes of people on TV, sports shows, musicians, and actors.  I might see something they are wearing or hear something they say and want to copy it…whether it’s a joke, a certain style, a certain article of clothing, or even a piece of technology.

I have heroes like Tim Tebow, Will Farrell, Oprah, Jay Leno, the broadcasters on ESPN Sportscenter, Simon on American Idol, J.J. Abrams (the creator of Lost), General Larry Platt (pants on the ground guy).

I just sometimes find myself wanting to be like them…you know what I’m talking about?  Like, “man, I wish I could be as athletic as him/her, or tall as him/her, or be as funny as _________, or witty as _________,or dress as well as _______, or have the same technology as _____________, or fill in the blank with your favorite band/musician/movie star/or celebrity__________.”

And if I’m super honest, I’m not just jealous of and want to emulate movie stars and famous people¾sometimes it’s even people I know.  I see a friend or acquaintance who gets a new laptop or iPhone and I’m like, “man, I wish I could have that.”  Or someone gets a new car and I’m like, “I wish I could have that.”  Or someone gets a new shirt or jacket from Express and I’m like, “Man, I wish I could have clothes like that.”  Or when I was in junior high and high school, the guy who had all the attention and all the girls’ attention and all the popularity¾I was like “Man, I wish I could be like that.”

EVER BEEN THERE? I know I have; I probably still am there from time to time.

What is it about us that makes us want to emulate other people?  Why do we have this burning desire to dress like, talk like, look like, someone else?

I think part of it is our culture’s addiction to Celebrities.  That’s why we have shows like E-Tonight, so we can know what Brad and Angelina are up to or who Tony Romo is dating, or what Ashton Kutcher is up to.

Our culture teaches us that to be hot, popular, liked, and loved we have to act like other people.

Have you ever felt pressure to be like someone else or to act like someone else?

The problem with all of this hero stuff is that we begin to feel insignificant and insecure: like we are not pretty enough or hot enough or not dressed well enough or are not athletic enough or we don’t skateboard well enough or sing well enough or play electric guitar good enough or play Nintendo Wii good enough…and the list goes on and on and on.

Or the guys don’t notice me enough…or all the girls just like the “hot guy” or you fill in the blank______________ ( I am not this…or I don’t do this well enough.)

I HATE THAT FEELING, DON’T YOU?…THAT YOU’RE NOT GOOD ENOUGH OR PRETTY ENOUGH OR WELL-DRESSED ENOUGH?

And the truth is that God never gives us those feelings; He always accepts us and loves who we are and challenges us to be who we are because there are people who will only respond to us (our personality, our interests, our dress style, our humor).  God created you to make a difference and until you realize that God created you to be you and that He wants to use you just as you are to make a difference in other people’s lives, then you will never make the difference that God wants you to.

YOU WILL NEVER LIVE UP TO YOUR POTENTIAL UNTIL YOU STOP CARING WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THINK OF YOU AND BE WHO YOU ARE IN GOD!

GOD’S WORD SAYS IT THIS WAY:

Oh yes, you shaped me first inside, then out; you formed me in my mother’s womb. I thank you, High God—you’re breathtaking! Body and soul, I am marvelously made! I worship in adoration—what a creation! You know me inside and out, you know every bone in my body; You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit, how I was sculpted from nothing into something. Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth; all the stages of my life were spread out before you, The days of my life all prepared before I’d even lived one day. Your thoughts—how rare, how beautiful! God, I’ll never comprehend them! I couldn’t even begin to count them—any more than I could count the sand of the sea.

The truth is that “you are a marvel.” There is no one else in all the world exactly like you.  There will never be another person exactly like you.  God made you who you are so you could make a difference just the way you are.

You’re not a mistake. Even if your parents have told you that.Actually, statistics tell us that the probability of you being born exactly as you are in this exact time is 1 in 400,000,000,000. To put that into perspective, the odds of you bowling a 300 game: 1 in 11,500. Being hit by lightening: 1 in 576,000. Becoming president of the United States: 1 in 10,000,000. Of winning the Mega Million lottery: 1 in 175,000,000.

Of your being born in this particular time and place: 1 in 400,000,000,000.

Think about it: If just one of your relevatives made a different choice in their life, (no matter how big or small) or died early, or married a different person, you wouldn’t be here.  If your great-great grandpa married a different woman, you wouldn’t be here.  If your great-great-great grandma died early, you wouldn’t be here.  If your mom decided to date and marry a different guy other than your dad, you woudn’t be here.  If there was a natural disaster that killed anyone of your descendants, you wouldn’t be here…I THINK YOU GET THE POINT!

IT’S A MIRACLE THAT YOU ARE EVEN HERE…but so many times we take life for granted.

Begin to like yourself.  Become friends with yourself.  Begin to let God show you that you really are a marvel.  And trust that He has a plan for you and loves you…because if you do, then you will stop being insecure and start making a difference and being who you REALLY are.

Jeremiah 29:11

I know what I’m doing. I have it all planned out—plans to take care of you, not abandon you, plans to give you the future you hope for.

In my early twenties, the thing that I struggled with the most was worry over my future.  I worried over pretty much everything imaginable:  Who will my future wife be?  What will be my career?  Will I ever make it in ministry? Will I make all of the money that I want to?  Will I have lasting friendships? You name it when it comes to the future, and I probably worried about it. My life in my early twenties seemed to go from one worry to another.  At times my life seemed consumed with worry.  It was hard to trust God with my future and with the dreams in my heart.  My parents, pastors, and leaders would encourage me in the fact that God really did know what He was doing and that He would work things out for me in His own time; but I thought in my heart that their advice was simply platitudes:  an easy answer for what I was going through.

I am now 28 and happily married to the woman of my dreams.  My wife and I are both educators who also volunteer at a local youth ministry and travel part-time as youth evangelists.  The thing that keeps coming back to me as I meet twentysomethings, whether in my church or as we travel, is that they are really worried about the future.  It is not uncommon to find twentysomethings who have had panic attacks as well as nervous breakdowns because of their anxiety about the future.  I see this problem of worry as an epidemic that has swept across our generation.  For whatever reason, I don’t think that generations that have gone before us Generation Ys had quite the problems with fear over the future that we do.  Maybe it’s because many of our predecessors lived in an American culture and economy where it was just common sense to take the next step in front of you:  You graduate from high school, and if you can’t afford college then you get a job at the factory or some other place where you can take care of your responsiblities, simple as that.  If you do have the money to go to college, then you go and try to find the best job that you can.  Things seemed more simple for our predecessors:  They had responsibilities such as bills, husbands, wives, babies, etc., so they got a job to fulfill their responsibilites and did the best that they could…simple as that.  But we as Generation Y on the other hand, have been raised to believe that we can do anything that we want if we put our minds to it.  We no longer have the limitations of the past.  Whether it was the extensive marketing we experienced through media growing up or whether it was the adults in our lives who breathed life into our dreams, we now think that the “world is our oyster.”

Though I think our belief as a generation that we can reach whatever dream we want to if we put our mind to it is a good thing, I think at times our philosophy can be crippling for us.  It is now not uncommon to find a 25 year old college grad working at Starbucks because they don’t want to use their degree (I know because I was that person for a while).  I have even read articles about business people who take classes on how to manage twentysomethings in the workplace so that they don’t hurt their younger worker’s feelings or crush their dreams.  We sometimes pass up opportunities or pass on responsibility in pursuit of our “dream.”  I think this is kind-of our achilles heel; in many ways our belief in our dreams and desires helps us, but in some ways it keeps us from seeing the next step that God has for us because we have our heads in the clouds.

I believe that God wants to use this generation like never before; He has incredible plans for us and He wants to use us to bring salvation to the nations.  The question, though, is the following:  Will we trust God enough to let Him workout His plan in our lives in His time and His way?  That is really the issue at stake.  Are we willing to let God do what He wants to in our lives, or are we just going to keep trying to make our dreams come true in our own way?  As long as we hold onto our dreams and try to fulfill them in the way that seems best to us, we will continue to run into a wall.  Maybe God doesn’t want your dream to happen the way that you think it should; maybe He has something much better for you, but until you surrender your dream to Him his hands our tied.  This is the truth I had to be convinced of in my twenties.  I had to learn that God is absolutely in control and He wants to work our lives out for good; I only need to submit to His plan and allow Him to do His thing in my life.  The problem is that we are so quick to try to play the role of “God” in our lives.  Just listen-in on a twentysomething conversation about future plans; I guaranteee you that you will hear the words “my”, “I”, and “me” over and over again.  You will hear things about “my future”, “my plan”, “my dream”, “my desire”, “my future wife/husband”, and I doubt you will hear much about “God’s dream”, “God’s desire”, “God’s future for my life”.  I believe that we can make things more simple for ourselves by surrendering our dreams, desires, and stories to God and letting Him slowly reveal His plans for us.