Why Now Is The Time

Why are your teen years the best time to start learning new life skills that you can turn into a ministry or business? Lets explore four reasons why right now is the best opportunity you will have in your lifetime.

It's an encouragement to others

There is just something about seeing productive, bright-eyed young people that endears them to adults. Perhaps it's because we live in a generation where slothfulness and irresponsibility is so rampant that when someone with a diligence step and initiative hand walks in, people take note – especially the elderly. It gives an older man or woman hope when they meet young folks who are hard working and cheerful and gives us a wide open witness to speak about the God we serve. The Bible calls it shining as lights in the darkness of a perverse and crooked nation. (Philippians 1:15)

Freedom to fail

Yes, I don't like that word either, but failure is failure no matter how you paint it and it happens to us all. There are no guarantees, and sometimes things don't work out despite our best plans, practices and prayers. The slightly better cousin to failure is delayed expectation. Delayed expectation is when your idea takes MUCH longer and costs MUCH more than you originally thought. This is the greatest reason why many needful businesses and ministries are never birthed. The risk of not being able to pay the bills or feed the family was too great if the idea failed. But while you're still in your father's home at least you will still have a bed to sleep in even if the idea crashes or takes twice as long to come into being. Plus, you will also have the love, counsel and encouragement only a family can give to keep you going. Speaking from experience, this is a blessing worth all the gold in the world and a priceless advantages of breaking the trail during your teen years. If the Lord is going to step into your life and redirect your course with a failed idea let it happen when you still have a house and meals paid for and the support of a family's love to get you back on your feet.

Now is when your foundation is being laid for better or worse

What you do during your teen years is laying the foundation for who you will be as an adult woman. A lazy teen will be a lazy woman, whereas a diligent young lady will blossom into a diligent woman who is praised in the gates. What you sow you shall reap and there is no time when good seed can be more timely sown than during your youthful years. Even small efforts will bear fruit later on.

Another important quality you are either building or destroying right now is a storehouse of knowledge. Knowledge by itself will crumble and crash, but when built upon godly character it becomes a tower of strength. God actually prizes knowledge so much that He wrote the book of Proverbs so young people could learn how to value it:

To give subtilty to the simple, to the young man knowledge and discretion. (Proverbs 1:4)

If knowledge and discretion are important enough for God to dedicate a whole book to teaching young folks about it, wouldn't it be wise to learn to treasure it as much as God does?

You have more time now then you'll ever have again.

Now is the best time for you to learn the habits of good time management. If you can manage your time in meaningful ways while still very young you'll be that much farther along in the game as an adult. One of the best ways you can spend this flexible time is seeking God through prayer and His word. In fact, the one thing that has impacted my life the most is the habit of stealing away to pour my heart out to my Heavenly Father and immerse myself in His word. This was a practice I started when I was twelve years old and it followed me into adulthood. If there is one thing that will alter the direction of your future, it is the decision to know Jesus. He can only be known through time spent talking and listening to Him. Scriptures will come back to guide you when you have an impossible decision to make and the instinct of seeking God with every problem that arises will cause God to direct your paths. (Proverbs 3:5-6)

The teen years should be a time of learning and becoming diligent, vision-oriented disciples of Christ. Now is the time to be learning, doing and being. God has given us these precious years to lay the foundation for the rest of our lives and it's our job to be careful stewards of such a trust.