Kara Powell - 3 Big Questions That Shape Your Future: A 60-Day Exploration of Who You Were Made to Be

Life is all about questions.

And wow, there are so many questions .

Questions about the world.

Questions about the past.

Questions about the present.

Questions about the futureand more pointedly, about your future .

Maybe you feel the pressure to have everything figured out. Maybe youve thought the point of life is actually to find all the answers. Maybe you have adults around you who make it seem like thats your job, which feels stressful.

We want to let you in on something up front: this is not that kind of book.

Embracing the Questions

We may not know you personally, but weve spent a lot of time with young people like you. We are youth leaders who serve in churches and researchers who listen to teenagers talk about life and faith. We hear a lot of questions, and we ask a lot of questions.

This book is about embracing the questions.

Because the answers arent the whole point. Questions take us on a journey, and the act of exploring, wondering, seeking, even wrestling our way toward answers changes ussometimes as much as the answers themselves.

Over the course of this book, well each share a few of our own stories of wrestling with big questions. Since there are three of us, well clarify whose story is whose by adding our names in parentheses the first time we say I in a post. One thing you should know though: asking a lot of questions is what landed each of us where we are today.

Brad used to get in trouble for asking too many questions in school. He couldnt help asking questions that started with But what about... ? Yes, he drove his teachers crazy.

Kristel is naturally curious and would always ask her parents Why... ? She wanted to know how and why the world functioned as it did and what it all meant. Shes still looking for answers.

And Kara especially used to love asking questions in church. All the better if she could stump her youth pastor and small group leader.

So if youre a question asker already, were here to say youre not alone . If, on the other hand, you tend to shy away from questions, or if asking questions stresses you out, youre also not alone. Weve written this as a guide you can use wherever you are in your journey.

Heres more good news: questions arent new to God. By one count of the four Gospels, Jesus was asked 183 questions.

Thats remarkable, but whats even more remarkable is that Jesus himself asked 307 questions. If he was comfortable with questions then , hes comfortable with questions now .