Sometimes you hear people talk about the "good old days"—a time when life was simpler, more carefree, without the troubles and confusion of today's world.

Do you ever long for the "good old days"?

When the "good old days" were depends on your frame of reference. Some would argue that the good old days were the 1930s, when life was simple and the country was built on church and family values.

Others might say it was the 1950s, when everyone seemed to enjoy a rapidly growing standard of living. Still others might look back on the 1980s as a time of prosperity and rejuvenation of national pride.

Were the good old days 1952? Postage stamps were only 3 cents, pocket-sized transistor radios hit retail stores and Singin' in the Rain was one of the top movies. Of course, for the thousands suffering and dying in the Korean War, those days weren't so good.

Maybe you fondly remember 1964. The Beatles were all the rage, and John Wayne was a popular movie star. Science promised a future of leisure, with plenty of prepackaged food and no disease. But then maybe you remember the fear you experienced as a child as you and your classmates practiced getting under your desks in case of thermonuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. Some of you may remember having to sit in the back of the bus because of the color of your skin.

Or maybe the good old days were 1996. That's when the Dilbert comic strip became popular and you could afford a personal computer to join an estimated 45 million people surfing the net. But since that time, have crime, poverty and war been eradicated?

When I was a teenager we used to watch the television program The Waltons. The storyline was about a large family living in the 1930s and 1940s. To me their lives seemed wonderful—school was fun, everyone in the community worked together, and every problem was solved in an hour.

But the reality of the time depicted in the program was something different. The 1930s witnessed the Great Depression. Although The Waltons touched on the poverty and unemployment, the reality for millions of people was much harsher.

I remember my father telling us about how during the Depression he, along with his mother and siblings, were put out on the street because they couldn't pay the rent. World War II soon followed—a horrendous time when some 60 million people died. For hundreds of millions of people, those "good old days" weren't so good.

When we lose purpose and hope in the present, and the future seems unclear or bleak, we tend to look to the past for the comfort of lost goodness. We want to believe in a less complicated time when people really did love each other and human nature was basically good.

The truth is that human nature, and the human condition, have always been a mixture of good and evil. The good old days were never as good as they seem.

Do present financial uncertainties, family problems, political chaos, loss of spiritual purpose and deterioration of morality throughout society have you longing for some lost good old days?

Here are three steps you can take to allow God to make today meaningful and help you grasp the future He is offering you beyond today.

Step 1: Seek God's future for your life.

The problem with a rose-colored, distorted view of the past is that it prevents you from working toward the future God wants for you.

When I was a young boy I was hiking with some friends. We were walking up a ravine that was used at night by drunks to sleep off their intoxication. Suddenly one of the boys dropped to his knees and shouted, "Money!" He found another coin, then another. Soon all three of us were down on the ground scurrying around digging up coins that had fallen out of the pockets of the drunks. Before long we had filled our pockets with dozens of quarters, dimes and nickels in an exciting treasure hunt.

For some time after that, I tended to walk with my head down, looking for coins. But then I had to relearn walking while not looking at the ground. Because in looking down, hoping to relive a past moment, I might find a dime or quarter now and then—but think of all the sunsets I would miss, all the people I would never meet, all the accidents I would experience running into things.

That's the sad reality of what it's like to live in the past, hoping to somehow recapture the good old days. To deal with nostalgia you must accept that God has a future goal for your life and that this future depends on your decisions now.

Jesus Christ taught about His future return to reward His followers in a parable about sheep and goats (true followers who love God and neighbor are represented as sheep while those who only claim to love God and neighbor are represented as goats). The promise of the parable to the true followers is this: "Then the King will say to those on His right hand, 'Come you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world'" (Matthew 25:34).

The future is already planned! The question God is asking is: How much do you want His future?

God wants to clean up the mess in your life. The Creator of life wants to teach you how life works. He has a purpose for you, but first you're going to have to admit that your ways don't work. You have to ask God to show you the wrongness of your actions and thoughts and reveal to you the right way to live as shown in the Bible. Only then can you receive the future He wants to give you!

Step 2: Seek God's purpose in your life now.

God has an awesome future planned for all those who seek Him. This brings us to the next step on this road to eternal life—you must seek God's purpose in your life now.

The apostle Paul traveled to Athens and faced a group of some of the most scholarly philosophers of his day. He was challenged with explaining to these Greco-Roman thinkers steeped in polytheistic idolatry a concept about God and His purpose for human beings that was totally new to them.

Here's what Paul told them: "God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. Nor is He worshiped with men's hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things.

"And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, 'For we are also His offspring.'

"Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man's devising.

"Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead" (Acts 17:24-31).

God created human beings because He wants children to be with Him in His family for eternity. When you turn to God, and submit to His purpose in your life, you can have a Father-child relationship with Him now. The apostle John wrote, "Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is" (1 John 3:2).

If you want this future, a promise to be like God and see Him as He is, then you must dedicate your life to acting and thinking like a child of God. In the next verse John wrote, "And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure" (verse 4).

Jesus Christ, as your older brother, must become your model of behavior. You must spend time in prayer asking God to guide your life to prepare you for His future and be willing to obey His instructions.

Step 3: Don't allow present difficulties to sidetrack you from the future God is planning for you.

Are you allowing today's problems to rob you of your present peace of mind and hope for the future?

It's not just the big problems of life that keep us from living in anticipation of God's future—problems like illness, loss of jobs, death of a loved one—but the day-to-day grind of the little problems that can wear us out and sidetrack us from God's purpose.

I once read about a tree in Colorado that scientists were investigating because it had survived for an estimated 400 years. It had been struck by lightning on multiple occasions and survived drought, avalanches and storms. Finally it succumbed—not to any of these major threats to it, but because a horde of tiny insects destroyed the tree from the inside out.

We can allow the horde of daily inconveniences and problems to drain our emotional and spiritual strength, or we can begin to see life's difficulties as opportunities to be taught lessons from God so that His purpose can be fulfilled in our lives. When God is in charge of your life you can begin to see problems as opportunities to trust that He will bring about what is right and best for you as His child (Romans 8:28).

When were the good old days?

Imagine a storm raging outside your home. The wind is howling, tree limbs cracking, and cold rain pelting the roof. You and your family sleep in warmth and comfort, safe from the weather. Later, you could look back on that time as the "good old days."

Now imagine a group of fishermen out on a lake in the same storm. They are soaked and freezing. The mast is broken. The boat is taking on water with each crash of a wave. They look into each other's faces and without words share the terror that they are all going to die.

One of the men shouts out that someone is walking toward them—someone walking on water! Peter perceives it is Jesus Christ and jumps out of the boat, and for a few moments he actually walks on water too. After Jesus saves the sinking Peter, they climb into the boat and with a few words the Son of God calms the storm (Matthew 14:24-33).

Years later no one who slept soundly in safety and warmth remembers that night, but for the fishermen in the boat there are many occasions when people ask them to tell the story of when they were in a terrible storm and Jesus saved them.  Parents retell the story to children. All agree that they wish they could have been there and that those were the good old days.

No matter what anyone else was doing that night, the place to be was in a sinking boat in the middle of a gale. You might have been shivering with cold and terrified, but you watched Jesus walk on water and through the power of God calm the turbulent sea.

It is often like that in life. Many times it is when we're most hopeless and frightened that God becomes most real to us. Sometimes the good old days are in the storms God calms.

If you're allowing God to fulfill His purpose in your life now, then there's no better time to live than right now—even with your difficulties and problems—because God is preparing you for His future.

God wants to clean up your life. He wants you to turn to Him as the source of life and as your Father. He wants you to be His child forever in His Kingdom. This is His future for you. The question being asked of you is this: Do you want His future by living His purpose in your life today?