I’ll never forget an illustration that my dad, a missionary, often shares with people. 

Picture yourself on a warm beach, a salty breeze wafting by, palm trees waving across the slopes, and gulls crying in the distance as they swoop across the miles of sand stretching in either direction. Now reach down and pinch about 80 grains of sand and place it in the palm of your hand. That represents your life on earth - all the years any of us could expect in this world before we meet our beloved Maker and Savior. How long are our lives on earth compared to eternity? Is the sand on that beach enough to represent eternity? What about all the beaches along the coast or even the entire continent combined? A quick internet search estimates there are seven quintillion, five hundred quadrillion (7,500,000,000,000,000,000) grains of sand across all the world’s beaches. Mathematically, that is much closer to zero than to infinity, so all the sand on earth is still a severe underestimation of eternity. 

If we anticipate spending such a vast proportion of our existence in eternity, why do we spend so much time and energy on earthly endeavors?

Perhaps that is a new idea for you or perhaps you are already sold on prioritizing eternity and spreading Jesus’ Kingdom on earth as much as possible. But for many of us, the question remains: 

In light of eternity, what should we do with our lives? 

More specifically, what should you do with your life?

In Missionary Training School, we are passionate about helping people find their unique roles in God’s greater Kingdom. As part of the curriculum, we study different personality types and spiritual and natural giftings from multiple perspectives. In addition, we spend a week learning about God-given dreams and allow students time to dream without limitation.

But sometimes these dreams require a catalyst, because what we would do without limitation seems to have little bearing on the real world. As adults many of us are well-trained to hold the status quo as realism instead of cultivating our imagination. So let me share a few catalyzing questions that have been impactful for me.

Take a minute to dream! Don’t hold back and see what happens as you consider these questions.

These first questions are designed to help you consider what you were created to do :

If you could do anything in the world, and you knew you could not possibly fail but would absolutely succeed, what would you do?

The key with this question is to get past the one-time events like skydiving, climbing Mount Everest, or flying to space, and to discover long-term dreams.

Question variations:

The second set of questions is to help you consider what problem in the world you were made to address:

What significantly and consistently bothers you about the world that does not seem to bother anyone else?

Again, the key here is consistency. We can all watch a video about a dreadful situation in the world and have heart-wrenching compassion. And we should feel compassion and do something about it whenever we can. But if an issue does not continue to bother you day after day, then that is probably not what you were made to address.

Question variations:

The crux of your purpose might lie in the intersection of your answers to those questions. 

What if you could do your favorite thing and make a difference about the problem in the world that bothers you most?

It may seem too good to be true. Let me give you a couple real examples.

When my brother-in-law was about 5 years old, he used to watch his dad print Bibles on a printing press. Inspired, he began dreaming of doing that as an adult. Decades later, having forgotten the dream altogether, he and my sister moved to Mexico as missionaries with the goal of ministering to and encouraging local churches. One day, my brother-in-law was running a risograph printing copies for a local pastor. When he glanced down and saw pages of the book of John coming off the machine, he suddenly remembered his childhood dream! God had made his dream happen!

When I was a child, I created written languages for fun. I was fascinated when I heard about different structures used by different scripts, and I would play around with these concepts. As a teenager, I began dreaming about creating a website to train people how to do children’s ministry. With my meager HTML skills, I set to work - but lacked the experience to produce enough content for a useful site. Years later, I was involved in a ministry writing children’s ministry curriculum. When we began translating into other languages, I was tasked with developing internal systems for working in various scripts, and I delighted in learning how Hindi, Arabic, and other written languages worked. I was also tasked with designing a website that could keep thousands of children’s ministry files organized in those various languages.

Ok, two examples does not prove that it is always possible; perhaps we were just lucky. However, in light of eternity and the infinite wisdom of our Creator, I believe it would be unwise to discount our dreams as infeasible without earnest consideration.

I’ve heard of hiking and rock climbing adventurers who hosted a missions adventure camp for teens. I’ve heard of a woman baking cookies to minister to women in a neighborhood brothel. I’ve heard of thriving sports ministries reaching teens in Eastern Europe. And if your dream involves behind-the-scenes IT or administration, you would have countless missions agencies vying for your full-time participation.

We at Global Frontier Missions encourage you to dream and to pray about these dreams and hand them into the care of your loving Creator. After all, His dreams are even bigger than ours (Eph 3:20). And He is much better at multiplication (Mat 13:23) than we are. With our God with whom all things are possible (Mat 19:26), following your dream might just affect the lives of other people for the next 7,500,000,000,000,000,000 years and forever.

Written by a Global Frontier Missions staff member.