How to Be Who You Really Are In Christ
The Necessity of Prospection in the Christian Life
I like Dr. Benjamin Hardy and his books. I especially like the books he wrote with Dan Sullivan. One of them, Be Your Future Self Now is powerful, especially when you think of it through the lens of the Gospel.
Hardy uses the term prospection to discuss the human tendency to think about the future and attempt to predict it.
The problem is that we are usually wrong.
His evidence is that 10 years ago, you could not have predicted the self and life you are now.
You can see the past fairly clearly, but the future, not so much.
It doesn't stop us from trying, and usually predicting wrong stuff that is harmful to our actual future.
If you tend to worry, then you are prospecting.
And your prospection is causing some of your future, and it is certainly affecting your quality of life.
Hardy's point: Why not be intentional about it?
Most people, he says, just don't have imagination.
Develop imagination regarding your self and circumstances.
Then………
Pull your future self, and in some cases, circumstances, on in to the present!
It's about identity. You identify with the future self you have prospected and you become him or her much faster.
Wow! This is powerful.
But it is even more powerful when you look at the same process through the amazing and wonderful Christian lens.
Living the Christian life is all about identity.
We get a new identity in Christ when we believe and receive His free gift of:
Life eternal!
Life abundant!
Adoption as sons and daughters of God!
We should all be doing really great all the time in light of this.
But we aren't all doing really great all the time, because we don't know how to prospect our future selves.
We have the right to be in Christ. To be new creations. "Children of God, for that is what we are!" (1 John 3:1)
But we live in the past instead.
Or in a present defined by the past! No, no, no! We mustn't!
Because, what a waste!
God has given us the right to look into who we'll be when Christ returns and "we see Him as He is..." (1 John 3:2), when the Trumpet sounds and we are changed "in the twinkling of an eye" (1 Corinthians 15:52)!
We look into that future and pull that future self into the present.
This takes imagination, even though it's totally true. Why? Because we were wired to look at the past, but not to be fortune tellers. We just don't know how to actually predict the future because we've never experienced it.
So what would it take to fire up your imagination for this very real image of the future you?
How often? Daily? 3 times, 4 times, 10 times a day?
Try it now. See yourself as God sees you. Prospect.
Don't feel bad that it's difficult. Use your God-given imagination to prospect into Christlikeness. It's your birthright.
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I think I need to re-read this multiple times to really let this concept sink in. It’s quite a mental shift to think in a future reality when the past has already been a lived reality.