I’m not sure when it hit. It was sometime between this article or maybe this video when I realized that it’s up to us to change the pulse of our generation. For too long, we have been labeled as the generation that is weak and lazy. We get discouraged easily and quit when we don’t win. We care about everything superficial and nothing important. We’d rather have a participation trophy than first place. The list goes on.

And while it’s extremely tempting to look at the generation before us (hello, parents) and remind them that they are the ones that coddled us into this current state, that scapegoat is far too convenient.

So here’s my mantra, millennials: we can do hard things.

I know we can. I’ve seen us do it. I’ve seen my friends move across the world and start their families in third world countries, all for the sake of people knowing the name of Jesus. I’ve seen my friends battle cancer, bury their first-born son, lose a father, and overcome an addiction – all before a 30th birthday.

We are the generation that can complete the Great Commission. We are the generation that can trade the comforts our American passport offers and transport our lives and jobs to places where the name of Jesus is not yet known.

We are the generation that believes the American dream is not the secret to happiness and can sacrifice to exchange a steady paycheck for worshippers around the throne of God.  We are the generation that can once again believe that the Church is God’s plan for reaching the world, so let’s revive it with the overwhelming love and acceptance and grace and compassion of the gospel.

Let’s use our flexible, adaptable, idealistic minds to change the world. There are 2.9 billion people left who have never heard the name of Jesus.  We can be the generation to tell them.

It will be difficult. We will commit to perseverance and die to preference. We will lose some and we will sacrifice a lot. But we can do hard things.