Kids, your mindset will dictate how you respond to various crisis in your life.
A growth mindset is when you view yourself not as a static individual but capable of meaningful change. The reason this is so important is if you think that you cannot climb a mountain, you won’t try. But with a growth mindset, even if you try and fail you can learn what it will take to succeed next time. Failure within a growth mindset is actually good because it teaches you what doesn’t work. Then you envision yourself improving you empower yourself to actually take steps to get better. I kind of hate that “mindset” has become a cliché’ so lets talk about it in another way, a more meaningful way.
A growth mindset actually means hope. It is a desire to see something come into being. I hope for a better life for you, my children, than mine. Hope is the seed of action. If I have hope I am empowered to act courageously. Hope is not mere optimism or positive thinking. Optimism and positive thinking cannot hold up to the terrible things this life has to hit us with. Hope is a belief about the universe and where it is headed beyond our own life. But how can you maintain hope when all around us there is so much tragedy and death and despair? How do you have hope when you feel your own frailty and inflexiblness creep out of your very soul. You are not alone. These problems are massive and required massive action to make right. That is the power of Christ’s work on the cross. Jesus changed the world in that moment with his act of substitutionary grace. He took it on so we don’t have to and turned around an forgave us for all the ways we’re not ok. You are already ok. Your wounds from sin are already made right. It was costly, but it was an act of love that brings hope into the world.
My Hope is that through Christ, God is at work in me, through me, and in others. And more than just that I have the ability to participate in his redemption of the world. This promise in made in ancient passages, “Behold I will replace your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh” and is pointed to in the future, “Behold, I make all things new.” Redemption is coming. In fact, it has already come.
Now lets bring it into your life. In your time and place. Where have you lost hope? Stop and think, what feels hopeless to you. Write it down if that’s helpful.
Now, this hopeless thing. This thing that’s on your heart. Through God’s act it can and will be conquered. Give it over to him with hope and you are free to act. If you wrote it down, write a sentence of hope around that word. For example, I have at times felt hopeless that Liz and I can heal from the loss of our child through miscarriage, I can write and have written, “I have hope that we will not always feel this despair. I have hope that will we grow together through our shared grief. I have hope that we will see this child in heaven.”
You can do what you need to do without being frozen in fear and despair. I challenge you to shift your mind towards hope. Put your trust in God and know that he asks you to be apart of his plan to change the world. And it begins inside yourself. Begin there and work outward. With God’s help you can change and can participate in healing the wounds of sin in yourself and those around you. You can even do the small things in life. In fact that’s often the best place to start.
With this shift in mindset to one of hope, there is nothing you cannot go forward and face with courage. There are things which will shake you and challenge this hopefulness. But you have the ability to choose to stay and live in hope. You can keep going. Keep going and don’t you quit. The world depends on it.