Are You Ready to Make History?
Are You Ready to Make History?
I’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating: I don’t think people want enough.
Jesus said that His purpose is to give us “life—life in all its fullness” or “more and better life than [you] ever dreamed of” (John 10:10 NCV, MSG). Why would He say that if we weren’t supposed to want it?
That “more and better life than [you] ever dreamed of” is the future that exists in God’s mind. It’s the dream He has for each of us. It’s your best possible future. I call it a preferred future. We can tap into this dream and create a preferred future for ourselves and others.
If we want to.
Thank God for people who have a highly stimulated “want to.” History doesn’t have much to say about nice people who live nice lives. History talks about people who wanted more.
John Adams, one of the founding fathers of the United States and its second president, was an incredibly ambitious young man. He was also a deeply moral man who desperately wanted to do something great with his life:
He felt “anxious, eager after something,” but what it was he did not know. . . . “I have . . . a strong desire for distinction.”
“I never shall shine, ’til some animating occasion calls forth all my powers.” It was 1760, the year twenty-two-year-old George III was crowned king and Adams turned twenty-five. . . . “Why have I not genius to start some new thought?” he asked at another point in his diary. “Some thing that will surprise the world?”1
What Adams did not know was that the “animating occasion” he longed for would come through the American War of Independence. The war, and all it entailed, would bring him great suffering. He risked his life, his family, and his fortune. But he achieved greatness. He became the mind behind Jefferson’s Declaration and a father of his nation. He gave himself completely to pursuing the cause of freedom and to shaping a nation under God.
He wanted. He suffered. He persevered. He deepened. He made history. Thank God for people like John Adams.
“This world needs people who want more than nice little lives. This world needs people who care. People who want something great. People who are willing to go after it.”
You don’t have to be a young person to want more. One of my heroes is Frances Hesselbein. Frances became CEO of the Girl Scouts of the USA in 1976 at an age when many people might be thinking about retirement. Legendary accomplishments. Reinvented the Girl Scouts. Efforts involving 2,250,000 girls, 750,000 volunteers, and a staff of about 30,000 people. Awarded the United States of America’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in 1998 as a “pioneer for women, volunteerism, diversity and opportunity.”2
In 2009, more than three decades after she began her leadership of the Girl Scouts, Frances was appointed the Class of 1951 Chair for the Study of Leadership at the United States Military Academy at West Point. She regularly spent significant time shaping the future of the world by teaching the young leaders there. She exposed them to other great thought leaders she knows as well. There she was, still shaping the future.
“If we are called to serve, then we know what we should be doing and, when we are done with that, there’s always something else waiting.” - Frances Hesselbein
I had lunch with Frances a few months ago. She’s still going strong, still going in to her office every day, and still changing lives. Even at the age of . . . well, it would be ungentlemanly of me to say, but we’re talking triple digits.
When Frances spoke to the leaders at the church where I serve, she said, “We never discuss age. . . . To retire is the language of the past. . . . If we are called to serve, then we know what we should be doing and, when we are done with that, there’s always something else waiting.” She then restated her most famous saying: “To live is to serve,” and then, “If that is true, then as long as we are breathing we are serving.”
Frances is not interested in a focus on the past. Her focus, even after a lifetime of service, is future, future, future.
Look—I don’t care if you are eighteen, thirty, or one hundred. You can create a preferred future. You can make history.
If you want to.
David McCullough, John Adams (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), 47
Bill Clinton, remarks on the awarding of the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Frances Hesselbein, as quoted by Leader to Leader Institute, “Hesselbein Wins Presidential Medal of Freedom,” http://www.hesselbeininstitute.org/about/press-releases/df_press_release.html
Adapted from Live Ten (Thomas Nelson) and The Hospitable Leader (Baker Publishing Group) by Terry A. Smith. All rights reserved.