Rev. Dr. Mike Wooton

When I was a teenager, I wasn’t taking my faith very seriously. I was doing things my own way and putting God off to the side in about every way I could. It didn’t take long for some of the consequences to start showing up.

Eventually, I began taking my faith seriously. I started saying yes to Jesus, making better decisions and trying to live differently. Some of those decisions produced results almost immediately. People trusted me more, adults noticed I was becoming more responsible and some of my relationships began to thrive. It was an awesome and immediately rewarding experience. It almost felt like pushing a button: make a good decision, get a good result. I loved that system.

However, I soon discovered that more and more of my decisions weren’t working that way. Do something good—no good result. Treat someone nicely—they didn’t care. Share Jesus with someone—they rejected it. I hated that system.

About that time, I remember sitting around talking with a pastor one day. He was around the age I am now. We weren’t having some deep counseling session, and I don’t even remember what we were talking about. During the conversation, he started reflecting on his own life and said something I’ve never forgotten. He told me there were decisions he had made when he was about my age, times when he had simply decided to say yes to Jesus, and he was just now experiencing the fruit of those decisions.

I remember thinking, “Just now? Almost three decades later?”

That stopped me. I was a teenager wanting immediate blessings from my good choices, and he was telling me that some of the choices I was making might not come to fruition until I was an ancient, rusty old guy.

He was right.

I’m on the other side of that conversation now (old and rusty) and I can see it much more clearly. Some decisions I made as a teenager to follow Jesus didn’t seem particularly dramatic at the time, but those decisions are blessing me years later.

If you want to follow Jesus while you’re young, here are five things I wish every young person knew.

1. Decide who you’re going to follow before everybody else decides for you.

There are a lot of voices competing for your attention. Friends have opinions. Parents have opinions. Coaches and teachers have opinions. Then you pick up your phone and suddenly a few million more people are available to tell you how you should look, what you should believe, what you should buy and who you should become.

Some of those voices will be good. Some won’t. Jesus simply says, “Follow me.” Following Jesus means you’ve decided whose voice gets the final word. If you don’t decide what will guide your life, eventually somebody or something else will.

2. Don’t underestimate small decisions.

Most of the decisions that shape your life won’t feel very important when you make them. Who are you going to spend time with? Are you going to tell the truth when lying would be easier? What will you do when nobody is watching? What are you putting into your mind every day? Will you pray? Will you open your Bible? Will you show up at church even when your bed is making a very compelling theological argument for staying home?

Those choices can feel small, but it’s like guiding a ship. A few degrees today can mean a very different destination years from now. We tend to think our lives are shaped by a handful of enormous decisions, but much of the direction of your life is established through small decisions repeated over time. Don’t underestimate a small yes to Jesus.

3. Find people who are headed where you want to go.

Your friends matter. A lot. That doesn’t mean every friend you have needs to believe exactly what you believe, but the people closest to you will influence the direction of your life. Choose wisely.

Don’t just look at people who are your age, look ahead. Find adults who are ten, twenty or thirty years farther down the road whose lives make you think, “I’d like some of that in my life someday.” Ask questions, learn from their wins and losses.

I’m writing this article decades later because a pastor made one comment to me when I was a teenager. I doubt he went home that day thinking, “Wow, I really changed that kid’s life with that one.” He probably forgot about it… but I didn’t. You need people in your life who can see farther down the road than you can.

4. Don’t expect every good decision to pay off immediately.

This was hard for me to learn. Sometimes following Jesus produces an obvious result. You stop doing something destructive and your life gets better. You become more responsible and people begin trusting you. Hit the button. Immediate result. I like those.

Other times you do the right thing and nothing seems to happen…and sometimes doing the right thing actually makes life harder. That can make you wonder, if following Jesus is really making a difference?

The Bible says, “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up” (Galatians 6:9). I love those words: “at the proper time.” Not necessarily tomorrow.

Some seeds take a long time to grow. Don’t dig them up just because you can’t see anything happening yet.

5. Remember that you’re building a life, not just living a weekend.

When you’re young, this weekend can feel like the most important thing in the world.  Those things feel big because right now they are a big part of your world. I’m not going to pretend they don’t matter. but there’s also older versions of you coming and you’re going to become somebody.

While you can’t control everything that will happen to that future version of you, the decisions you make today are helping shape the person who will eventually arrive there. That’s one of the great opportunities of following Jesus while you’re young. You get to begin building your life on something solid before you even know everything God is going to do with it.

I don’t remember everything that pastor said to me when I was young, but I remember that conversation. Decades later, I understand what he meant.

Some of the best things in my life today didn’t begin with one enormous, heroic decision. They began with smaller decisions made years ago when I simply decided, I’m going to say yes to Jesus here. I didn’t know where every yes would lead. I certainly didn’t get everything right. I still don’t. But all these years later, I’m living in some of the fruit.

If you’re young and trying to follow Jesus, don’t get discouraged because you can’t see where all of this is going yet. You don’t have to.

Keep setting the course toward Jesus. Say yes today. Then get up tomorrow and say yes again.

One day you may look back and discover that some of the decisions that seemed so small when you were 13, 15, 17 or 21 helped shape the person you became and helped take you somewhere better than you could have imagined.