the key to resolving the tension between an ordinary and extraordinary life
“Virtue is what you do when no one is looking. The rest is marketing.” — Nassim Taleb
We live in a culture that pushes us to want to not only be extraordinary, but to be extraordinary right now. We feel the pressure to achieve faster and faster, to try to keep ahead of our peers. We want to be the leader, not the follower; the big splash, not the wet concrete that's waiting to dry.
Where did we get this expectation that we need to prove that we're extraordinary while we're young? While it's always existed, this mindset has been fed by things like the Forbes 30 Under 30 list. This list started in 2011, and for over ten years it has recognized thousands of young people who seemed poised to make an extraordinary impact.
As the Forbes 30 Under 30 lists became more popular, it's been copied in every area of life. Regional cities, niche industries, and even the Christian Evangelical Industrial Complex have jumped onto the trend, trying to identify extraordinary young people who are doing the most noteworthy things.
Why do we believe this? Because our culture tells us that the most extraordinary people achieve before they're 30 years old, whether that's a tech genius that drops out of college, an 18-year-old pop musician, or a viral social media star. In a recent Guardian article, the author says that things like the Forbes 30 under 30 list sell us a vision of success that fetishizes youth. She continues, "Forbes 30 under 30 isn't just a list; it's a mentality: a pressure to achieve great things before youth slips away from you.
These "before 30" lists push young people to try to succeed faster than ever, causing them to use their 30th birthdays as de facto finish lines for their race to create an extraordinary life. I've heard so many young people in their late 20s bemoan their impending 30th birthday. They think that since they haven't "made it" yet, they're a failure. Ordinary success isn't good enough, they feel like they need to be extraordinary to prove their value and worth.
But now that the Forbes 30 under 30 list has been put out for 12 years, there’s been a disturbing trend. Many of the young people that Forbes spotlighted through their magazine have gone on to commit the most egregious white-collar crimes in our society. Forbes in their rush to anoint the next generation of "extraordinary" young people featured now-notorious figures like Adam Neumann from WeWork, Elizabeth Holmes from Theranos, and Sam Bankman-Fried from FTX, along with several less well-known young people who have been arrested and are facing significant prison sentences and fines.
These now disgraced young people made it their goal to achieve as much external success as possible as soon as possible. And while each initially accomplished some incredible things, none of them were internally read to handle that external success. They all crashed and burned, destroying billions of dollars in wealth, as well as their own and other people's lives. They didn't have the character, integrity, and wisdom needed to support their success, and succumbed to various temptations towards immoral shortcuts, abuse, and fraud.
What's the lesson here? One of the most destructive desires in life is to try to become extraordinary before you're ready for it. Young people will do whatever it takes to be labeled as extraordinary by others, unwilling to admit that their inner character isn't up to the level of their external giftings.
This is one reason why so many actors, musicians, and athletes struggle. They become successful at a young age before they developed the character and integrity to handle the responsibility of the fame and money that they’ve received. The result of their "extraordinary" beginning in life is often a catastrophic implosion, as they're unable to bear the responsibility of their newfound fame and money and become a healthy adult.
What's the antidote to this pressure to become extraordinary before you can handle it? Patience. That is the key to living out this tension between our ordinariness and our desire for more. You have to be patient and wait for your life to develop so that you're ready for increased responsibilities when they arrive. Many young people dream of being extraordinary, but few spend their days developing the integrity and character that they’ll need to not self-destruct once they achieve any level of success.
And so we need to develop patience with what God is doing in our lives. Because we can't see him working right away, we assume that he's not working at all. We forget that God is working on a different schedule their our own. As Peter says, "With the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.”
Why do we need to be patient? Because God is giving us time to work through the major issues of our lives. We all have ticking time bombs in our lives, Shakespearean fatal flaws that exist deep in our lives. If you don't address these things when you're ordinary, you'll believe the praise of others and stop fighting against your lack of internal character and integrity. Eventually, though, these out-of-sight issues will cause your life to explode.
While we hate God’s slowness, he does it not to make us feel like a failure but because he loves us. So many young people achieve before they are ready and end up self-destructing, both inside and outside of the church. People exalt them because of their giftedness, but they never ask them the tough questions about their inner life and actions until after they've destroyed their organization, church, or family.
If you are feeling ordinary in your life, trust that God is using this time to develop your character and hone your issues, preparing you to be ready for future opportunities and assignments. Jesus makes it clear in Luke 16 that this is how God works. He says, “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.”
God is always watching to see who is faithful with the little things in their lives. When he sees people who are honest, faithful, humble, and reliant on him, he gives them more responsibility in his kingdom. This seems like torture when we're 25 or 35, but God uses it to protect us from ourselves. He gives you time to develop the integrity and character that you'll need in positions of leadership and influence in the obscurity of life, using this time to refine you and remove the impurities from your heart.
We see an example of both sides of this in Old Testament Israel. Saul became king at a young age and was a guy who looked the part of a king. He was tall, handsome, and was somebody people would follow. But while he looked like a king on the outside, his heart wasn't ready for the pressures of the position. And so he struggled with jealousy of others, an uncontrollable temper, and using God transactionally, things that caused his reign to fall apart and led to his premature death.
David, Saul's successor, had an opposite path to the throne. David spent months alone as an ordinary shepherd, caring for his father's sheep and developing both the external and internal character that he would one day need to be a successful leader. Even after he was anointed to be king, he had to wait over a decade to assume his throne, giving him time to grow and develop. While David's kingship wasn't without mistakes, his reign was marked by a heart that pursued God, and he was chosen to be a key figure in Jesus' lineage.
Moses is another person who waited in obscurity for decades, developing the character he needed for God's future calling for his life. After growing up as a prince in Pharaoh’s household, he no doubt would have been on Egypt's 30 under 30 lists. This all changed when he killed an Egyptian for mistreating an Israelite, causing him to flee to the wilderness. God allowed Moses to spend 40 years in the wilderness tending sheep, as he developed the humility, meekness, and inner strength needed to lead the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt at the age of 80.
While we shouldn’t think that if we put in our years being ordinary that God has to bless us with an extraordinary impact, we need to recognize that patience is required to be ready to reach your full potential.
A more recent example of this is the ministry of Tim Keller. He spent the first nine years of his pastoral career preaching at a blue-collar church in rural Virginia and didn't publish most of his books or become well-known until he was in his late fifties. So many young pastors want to people the "next Tim Keller" by 30, not realizing that he was a very ordinary pastor at an ordinary church.
When we recognize that God calls us to be faithful in the ordinary, we can relish our time spent in the little things, knowing that God is using these tasks to prepare us for greater things. God graciously withholds opportunities and blessings from us until we're more prepared for them. God shows his love for us, in that he doesn't give us responsibility and pressure that we aren't ready to handle yet.
So rather than trying to become some young phenom, I try to remind myself that my goal is faithful service and steady growth in the places that God has called me right now, no matter how ordinary they feel. So many young people try to peak by thirty, and in doing so, either achieve too quickly and wreck their lives, or don’t achieve on their timetable, causing them to grow so discouraged they lose all hope for their lives.
If you think about your life like an art craft project, our 20s and 30s are the time when we’re letting the glue dry. While the project might look ready, if you try to move forward to the next steps before the glue dries, it'll fall apart. Be patient as your life sets up, and trust that God is blessing you by not giving you early success, giving you the time you need to establish the deep foundation you’ll need to stand strong during times of greater responsibility later in life.
Here are a few ways that you can work to build the kind of foundation that God will build off of to do great things:
Develop your skills, rather than coast on your talent: As Solomon says in Proverbs 23: “Do you see a man skillful in his work? He will stand before kings; he will not stand before obscure men.”
Work on your flaws, rather than rest on your strengths: As James says in James 4: “Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up.”
Seek to serve others, rather than work to accumulate power: As Jesus said in Matthew 20, “But whoever would be great among you must be your servant.”
When I was growing up, my family had this songbook of classic songs that my brothers and I would sing together. One of the songs was called When I Was a Lad, from a Gilbert and Sullivan musical in the 1880s. The song was about how an office boy's hard work when he was young set him up for future success. They go:
When I was a lad I served a term
As office boy to an attorney's firm.
I cleaned the windows and I swept the floor,
And I polished up the handle of the big front door.What was the result of his hard work?
I polished up that handle so carefully
That now I am the Ruler of the Queen's Navy!While this song isn't based on real life, it represents a real principle: how we do the work in our lives that seems small and insignificant will impact our future roles and responsibilities. We each have metaphorical windows to clean, floors to sweep, and door handles to polish. Your job is to be faithful in the work God has given to you, even if it seems insignificant, and trust that He will give you new opportunities and greater responsibilities when it’s appropriate.
While the character in this British musical worked hard out of his ambition, we aren’t trying to be the ruler of the Queen’s navy. Instead, we are called to an even higher task: to use our lives in service to the King of Kings.
While we can ask God to help us pursue our God-given hopes and dreams, we know that ultimately, the Christian life is about surrendering our lives to His will and serving others, rather than following our cultural ideals and pushing our will for success onto others.
When we are good stewards of the tools, gifts, and opportunities that God gives to us, He will ensure that we gain more responsibility. God will say to us the same thing that the master tells the good servants in the parable of the talents: “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much.”
That means a life will look different than one that is aimed at some 30 under 30 list. Instead, we will be more concerned with what’s going on in our hearts, rather than in outward recognition. As Dallas Willard wrote, “God is more interested in the person you are becoming than in your work, or your ministry, or your job.”
As we learn to be faithful in the little things, we can trust that God will give us more and more responsibility. God is patient, working in us over years and decades to prepare us for a lifetime of work in His kingdom. No matter where you end up, you can trust that your life is going according to plan. Maybe not your plan for personal achievement, but according to God’s plan for His glory and your good.
