Archive for the ‘Motivation’ Category

The Prisoner of Chillon

Thursday, March 21st, 2013

George Gordon, Lord Byron was an English poet writing in the early nineteenth century. He’s one of the central figures in the literary movement called Romanticism, which began around the turn of the nineteenth century. The Romantic-era writers and poets thought that literature needed to be less about rationality and scientific empiricism, and more about human feelings and human experience. For George Byron this meant focusing on nature and the pathos, or spirit of a man. Byron was the poster child of the wunderkind of poets to take part in this movement.  He was wildly popular, although some of his poetry (like his long narrative poem Don Juan) was considered too scandalous for respectable people to read.  He was sort of the Paul MacCarthy of his age.

My favorite Byron poem is  “The Prisoner of Chillon.”  It is the story of a man who spent most of his adult life in prison. It’s about how we adjust to our surroundings: the prisoner is able to survive, even while watching his brothers die alongside him, because he believes in something greater than himself. No, we’re not talking about religion or spirituality – we’re talking about the prisoner’s political beliefs. He’s been thrown in prison for sharing his father’s belief in personal freedom and liberty.  But I would say in this age of facileness and superficiality we could stand to be a little more Romantic.

Ultimately though, this troubling poem is about disillusionment, and failure. Lord Byron’s poetic work “The Prisoner of Chillon” explores the struggle between a person’s ending their suffering and accepting it rather than holding on to the hope of freedom.   The author uses symbols to represent the immediate end of suffering, acceptance of defeat, and succumbing to torture in competition with hope, strength, and faith in eventual freedom.

My hair is gray, but not with years,
Nor grew it white
In a single night,
As men`s have grown from sudden fears;
My limbs are bow`d, though not with toil,
But rusted with a vile repose,
For they have been a dungeon`s spoil,
And mine has been the fate of those
To whom the goodly earth and air
Are bann`d, and barr`d – forbidden fare;

Have you ever been persecuted for something you didn’t do? Or for something you did do, but that you really and truly believed to be the right thing? Humans are able to survive almost anything, so long as they really and truly believe in the veracity of their cause. The trouble is, most secular Americans, and too many evangelical Americans, don’t have a cause worth dying for.

The unnamed “prisoner of Chillon” is alone in a cell by the banks of Lake Geneva, in Switzerland, where he has grown old as a prisoner. He says that his father was executed for his beliefs, and all six of his sons have suffered persecution for the same reason. Three of the six sons died outside of the prison: one was burnt at the stake and two died in battle.

The prisoner almost gives in to grief, but is revived when he hears the singing of a bird outside his window. It reminds him that there’s beauty and hope in the world. So he clings to that thought and survives. He survives but loses his ability to believe in the transcendent, to believe in God. When he regains his freedom, it is too late. “In quiet we had learn’d to dwell–/My very chains and I grew friends,/So much a long communion ends/To make us what we are:-even I/Regain’d my freedom with a sign.”

It was too late.  The idealist, the revolutionary, had been beaten, had been tamed by time, by torture, by neglect, by imprisonment, by discouragement. In effect, he could never escape the chains that his captors had placed on him.  He was doomed to be in “chains,” defeated, for the rest of his life.  In that sense, his captors, his enemies had won.

I think, in a way, the home school movement is like that.  We have been fighting, and struggling, for so many years, for a worthy, laudable cause.  Will we be able to take the next step? Will we lose our idealism? My point is evangelical Christians, after fighting so many  courageous fights, after sacrificing and suffering so long, will we tire out?  Will “my very chains and I grew friends?”  Will we “learn’d to love despair?”

Mom and dad, parent, let’s give these kids a cause worth dying for.  Let’s equip them for the long haul.  There is no longer any doubt:  this generation will experience excruciating persecution.  They can be hopeless prisoners of Chillon or Overcomers by the Blood of the Lamb.

In Revelation 12 the intensely persecuted John, himself a possible prisoner of Chillon, writes:

10 Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say:

   “Now have come the salvation and the power

   and the kingdom of our God,

   and the authority of his Messiah.

For the accuser of our brothers and sisters,

   who accuses them before our God day and night,

   has been hurled down.

11 They triumphed over him

   by the blood of the Lamb

   and by the word of their testimony;

they did not love their lives so much

   as to shrink from death.

That is the way we do it!  We will be overcomers by the blood of the Lamb, by the word of our testimony, and being willing to die for the cause!

Let us go forth, let us send this generation forth, so that we/they will never give up, will never lose their idealism and faith!

Wrestling With God

Tuesday, March 19th, 2013

Genesis 32: 22 That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two female servants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. 23 After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions. 24 So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. 25 When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. 26 Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.”  But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”

Almost every morning around 4:30 AM I wake up. I have tried everything I know to stay asleep until dawn at least.  Tylenol PM, even some things that are stronger, but nothing works. Like clockwork, at 4:30 AM I wake up.

I look over at my wife hoping that she is awake.  But she never is. The soft, flannel sheet grace her beautiful freckled shoulders cashiering into my dark world the late moon light luminosity glimmering and dancing through our upstairs bedroom window. For 35 years I have awakened next to this woman and it still takes my breath away. “As winter strips the leaves from around us, so that we may see the distant regions they formerly concealed, so old age takes away our enjoyments only to enlarge the prospect of the coming eternity.” (Jean Paul)

The silence is surreal and disorienting.  This is the silence of a winter country mountain farm. There is no hint of a sound.

Nonetheless, my heart is almost always nearly breaking and I there are screams in my soul that I cannot drown out.

I wistfully reach out and gently touch her shoulder.  I dare now wake her up.  God knows she works so hard.  Loves me so much.  Cares for me.  I know I am a high maintenance husband.  She needs all the sleep she can get.  Especially that deep sleep that I know longer enjoy, that sleep between 2-6 AM, that deep nocturnal slumber that serendipitously visits so very rarely to my soul.

In high school I remember my high school teacher, Mr. Watson, asking, “If a tree falls in the forest, and no one hears it, is it sound?”  The trees were falling in my forest and the sounds were deafening but I wondered if anyone was around to hear it.  And if no one heard my trees fall, was it really sound?

The darkness spoke only silence to my soul. The shadows of trees moving in the wind were my only companions this early morning.

This is, I assure you, the darkest time of every day.  The time when night is almost over but daylight has not come.

When I was a boy my dad would take us into the Devil Den swamps near Montrose, Arkansas, to ambush unwary green headed Mallard Ducks at daybreak. Like trolling mine sweepers, dragging our red ball hip books along through antediluvian mud, we would push through down tree limbs, avoiding jutting cypress knees.  The swamp had the sweet smell of death.  It was rumored that there was an old escaped slave den nearby, a place where runaway slaves would run and hide from cruel slave owners.  More than once I thought I saw their shiny black bodies run from tree to tree through the swamp. It was so dark.  It was even too dark to look at our compasses that probed into the frenzied quagmire that surrounding us and would have at least told us where North was if we could see it.  But we could not.

“Mallard ducks were worth it, “ I kept telling myself, although truly, I never liked eating wild ducks.  The meat was too rich and dark and perilous for this southern boy who liked anodyne, fried chicken, and domestication, cornbread.

It was so dark in the Devil’s Den.  And on those mornings, most mornings now, when I awaken at 4:30 AM, alone in the silence, I remember the Den. The only light we enjoyed was the North Star on the tail of the Big Dipper full of radiant repartee and iridescent chatter.

Genesis 32: 27 The man asked him, “What is your name?”   “Jacob,” he answered.  28 Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.”

Every morning I struggle.  I struggle with what could have been.  Other friends, in other places, even family members, are awakening in this darkness but their worlds are full of certainty, of jobs, and of pensions.  They are tired, as I am, but not conflicted.  They are at peace with their repertoire. They may not know the drama in which they play a role, but they know their role, and they play it well.

In these early, disquieting mornings, I know my role, but do not know the play in which I perform.  I do not even know my next line. I feel lost.

John Barth, in his novel The Floating Opera compares life to a floating opera.  This opera is being performed on a floating barge that is slowly moving up and down the Hudson River.  Spectators are standing on the bank looking at the drama unfold.  As long as the floating opera is in their sight, they grasp the meaning of the play.  They may even join in a chorus or two.  Life is unambiguous and consequential and full of beans. But then the barge moves on and the spectators are left in quiet uncertainty.

 29 Jacob said, “Please tell me your name.” But he replied, “Why do you ask my name?” Then he blessed him there.

The barge returns again and leaves again and so forth.

To me, the barge is absent at 4:30 A.M.  I am not sure what the story is.  I don’t know what my place is in the drama unfolding.  By 10AM I am regaining some élan. By 2PM I am completely confident; the play is right before me.  By 10 PM I am asleep . . . but again, at 4:30 A. M., the struggle begins again.

30 So Jacob called the place Peniel,[g] saying, “It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.”

But it is 4:30 A. M.  again.  “James,” in Hebrew, is “Jacob,”  “the deceiver,” “the one who struggles.” It is my Peniel.  It is where I meet God face to face.  It is a time when, again, I decide, “Whom will you serve today? If God is God serve Him! If Baal is God, serve him! (1 Kings 18:21)

4:30 AM lying next to my gray haired campaigner, is my Peniel, my time of struggle, but it is also my Mt. Carmel.  Each day I go up to  Mt. Carmel to challenge the gods of this age.  With my pen, with my prayers, I dare the cacophonic sirens of this discordant land to challenge my God to a duel.

Mt. Moriah each morning and I meet again a God who loves me so, so much, but who has no hyperbole in His portfolio, who literally demands everything from me.  Whether I see all the drama unfolding before me on the river or not, whether I fully understand what the outcome will be, God demands, in great love, in only the way a Savior can, that I give Him my all, my everything again. Especially at 4:30 AM.

It is 6:30 AM and my sugar plum, whose transcendent beautiful will soon belong to Clinique and Origin, but whose raw courage and fortitude is mine, and mine alone, for this new day,  for this moment, for this new Genesis.

I see the wrinkles, the circles under her eyes, but I will not insult the ambiance, the chronicle, the time that I know put them there by pretending they are not.  No there is no histrionics in my Karen and I will have none either.  Not right now.  Not for this moment when we kiss and bask in the dawn again. She is more beautiful than Cleopatra, more exotic Bathsheba, for surely Mark Antony and Solomon would feel cheated if they could have known my exquisite life companion.

31 The sun rose above him as he passed Peniel, and he was limping because of his hip. 32 Therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the tendon attached to the socket of the hip, because the socket of Jacob’s hip was touched near the tendon.

“Hi, honey. What is for breakfast?”

And I limp again, down the stairs, to my country kitchen for my oatmeal . . . and then I battle the gods of the ages again . . .

Remembering Why We Came

Tuesday, March 5th, 2013

In Eudora Welty’s short story “Worn Path,” the elderly African-American grandmother protagonist, Phoenix, has come to the doctor to obtain medicine for her grandson. But, because of senility, she cannot remember why she came!

The nurse tries to tease out of Phoenix her reason for coming.

 “You mustn’t take up our time this way, Aunt Phoenix,” the nurse said. “Tell us quickly about your grandson, and get it over. He isn’t dead, is he?’

At last there came a flicker and then a flame of comprehension across her face, and she spoke.

“My grandson. It was my memory had left me. There I sat and forgot why I made my long trip.”

“Forgot?” The nurse frowned. “After you came so far?”

 After coming so far, after working so hard, have we home schoolers forgotten why we came? Do you know why you are starting? Are we at the place where we can get the solution to our problems, but have we forgotten why we came?

My wife Karen and I, while we were home schooling our four children, rarely thought of grand things. We wanted to teach math and English and maybe science (every other day?) and still get to soccer practice on time! We always wanted to teach Spanish too, but, I confess, that “Spanish” was more a kiss and a promise than a reality. I am not extolling my failure, nor am I making excuses, the thing is, we had too many good things to do!

The truth is, our success in home schooling will be more about what we don’t do, than what we do. Our bookshelves are full of curricula, nature kits, and thinking games that we did not have time to do. I am glad we bought them though. A fleeting memory teases my psyche when I look at them, for they are still grace our bookshelves. We hope to use them yet with our grandchildren.

I have some regrets.

I would have climbed more hills with my children.

I live on a farm nestled in the foothills of the Laurel Highlands. The Pennsylvania Laurel Highlands go north up to Lake Erie, South to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Water. My farm lies halfway between both.

My farm is one of the few in the area that still uses spring water. Seven springs feed a generous cauldron of water above my rambling 1880 Pennsylvania farmhouse, built by practical Mennonites who had no use for inefficient fireplaces and ornate porches.

Next to my springhouse is a hill. I started to climb that hill yesterday. I turned back.

On this hill twenty years ago my children danced up this hill pulling their scratched, plastic sleds behind them. I would join them on top. On that hill we would welcome the moon, say good-bye to the sun. We dodged barbed wire and the angry stares of my wife Karen as we flew down the hill on plastic chariots. We defied fate, relying on gravity and our unmoved neighbor’s pasture to stop us before we crashed into a diminutive pond.

I looked at that hill today but I did not climb it. My children are gone and the springhouse is secure in concrete. Why should I climb that hill?

In our home school we could read about West Virginia. From that hill we could see West Virginia. From that hill, farmers allegedly saw the Flight 93 Crash. It is a place of discovery, wonder, and to me memory. But I have no reason to see West Virginia, 9-11 is in the ancient past. I will not climb that hill. I have no children, no laughter, no unsecured flights into chaos.

I will not climb that hill today.

My children loved that hill. It was a respite from Shakespeare and Milton. They thought it was a ticket to everywhere. Our hill promised unlimited possibility. It was the abode of trophy bucks, soaring bald eagles, and my children’s dreams. In their dreams I found my own. It was Mount Olympus, the home of the gods.

Homeschooling is over at my house. The hill is quiet and serene. And lonely. As I am. It provides a look at what was, what is no more. What will not be again. I will not climb that hill again. Not as long as I live.

This Christmas I will urge my grandchildren to climb that hill. It is time. They are old enough to pull the same sleds as their parents, to the top of that hill, to believe that all is possible, to defy fate and zoom down the hill, into the brush piles that nurture and protect the intrepid and foolish alike.

But I will not join them. Not this year. Never. I no longer believe in unlimited possibilities. But I am glad that there are those who do. I want them to climb the hill, for me, this year. New home schooling families, I want you to climb that hill.

Home schooling is unlimited possibility. Do not lose the joy, the possibilities, that home schooling will unleash. Do not neglect to take a break from calculus to climb that hill.

We often forget why we started doing this thing called home schooling: we wanted to raise a generation of offspring that would advance the Kingdom of God in this time and in this place. Like Granny Phoenix we must not arrive at our destination but forget why we came!

 Then Phoenix was like an old woman begging a dignified forgiveness for waking up frightened in the night. “I never did go to school, I was too old at the Surrender,” she said in a soft voice. “I’m an old woman without an education. It was my memory fail me. My little grandson, he is just the same, and I forgot it in the coming.”

As I reflect on those years, I wonder how often I forgot about why I came. Oh, God, how I wish I had more hills to climb with my children.

It is in the coming that we release our children to go. Do not forget your purpose of this great calling.

We need to remind ourselves about why we are doing what we are doing, why we will do what we will do, in the years ahead. It is a noble and grand vocation, this home schooling of our kids. Too sacred to trust to anyone else. Let’s do it! Let’s gather around our kitchen tables, in our dingy basements, and let us pause to remember where we are going and why we are doing.

“This is what come to me to do,” she said. “I going to the store and buy my child a little windmill they sells, made out of paper. He going to find it hard to believe there such a thing in the world. I’ll march myself back where he waiting, holding it straight up in this hand.”

 And while you are remembering why you are doing what you are doing, don’t forget to build a few windmills with the kids. Climb those hills and look at West Virginia. While you can. And when you do, think of me, and the thousands of home school friends who have come before you. Know that we pray for you, we believe in you. Find your way to those hills again. And climb them for all of us.

Pretending

Sunday, February 20th, 2011

I like to pretend.

 Every trip to the post office, every trip across country—it doesn’t matter where I go—I like to pretend I am on a mission.

 Karen doesn’t like to join my team, or army, or panzer group—even when I offer her a lieutenancy. Of course I am always the captain, but that is incidental.

 Karen just frowns at me.

 “Look to the South, Good Buddy,” I warn.  “The Nazis are coming fast . . .”

 “Keep your eyes on the road Jim,” she scolds.

 “10-4,” I respond as I pull the Tiger Tank (aka Toyota Prius) back to the center of the road.

 How about you?

 Why not make a mundane trip to the grocery store into a mission behind enemy lines? Why not make a trip to church into a scouting mission across the Sahara?

 Life is interesting enough, I suppose, without all the pretending  but it is never as much fun.

 My  7 year old grandson Zion will pretend with me.

 Last Christmas high command gave us a mission to take important orders to Second Army (i.e., Karen told me to take a letter to our mail box at the end of our 150 yard driveway. Brave Master Sergeant Zion volunteered to join me.

 “General Granna (i.e., Karen),” I warned.  “Do not be surprised if we don’t make it back alive.”

 “Don’t miss the postman, Jim,” Karen retorted.

 “Yes general,” I deferentially responded. “10-4.”

 After establishing our password, Zion and I grabbed our browning automatics (broken broom handles), grenades (plastic donuts from Zion’s sister’s pretend kitchen set), and bowie knives (Karen’s carrots) and quietly, with great alacrity, approached the dangerous mail box.

 Along the way, of course, we were attacked by banzai warriors (our four barn cats), a German Stuka (our Black Lab), and an enemy patrol (Karen lovingly called Granna).  Against all odds we made it.

 But not without casualties.  I sustained a serious leg injury and Zion was nicked in the left arm.  In fact, we lost several good pretend companions.  Sly Zion, halfway, as we hid behind the chicken coup insisted on a field promotion to lieutenant or he would desert.  I reluctantly agreed.

 After such an arduous and dangerous mission Lieutenant Zion and I celebrated at Granna’s kitchen table.  She served us A-rations (Christmas cookies) and mess coffee (hot chocolate with marshmellows).

 It doesn’t get much better than this, 10-4?

Easter Sunday 2010

Wednesday, April 14th, 2010

By my estimation I have preached 29 Easter sermons.  This year, wishing to be different, I chose to preach on Romans 8.  I alluded to the Easter narrative, but I preached on Romans 8.

Why?  Because everything about this chapter screams “He is risen!”

The truth is, I bet the disciples were suffering that morning.  Certainly the ladies who visited the grave were suffering.  They had come to prepare the body for burial; not to meet a Risen Lord.

When Paul speaks of the spiritual life in Romans 8 he speaks much of suffering. We who are in Christ need not suffer from guilt or fear, for our sins have all been forgiven. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (8:1-4). When we sin as Christians, we need never doubt that we are justified by faith because God’s Spirit dwells within us, bearing witness that we are God’s sons. Further, because the Spirit of God indwells us, He not only leads us to do the will of God, but He empowers our dead bodies to do so (8:5-17) (Diffenbaugh).

But the best thing I like about Romans 8:15 when we are invited to call God “Abba” or “daddy.”  I don’t know about you, but, beyond age 4 or 5, I never called my dad “daddy.” It was not cool.  In fact, I wanted to be extra cool so I tried calling dad “father” but that only got a scowl from my mother.  I compromised and called him “Dad.”  I know my son-in-law, who is really cool, calls me “Jim.”  Coolness not withstanding,  that is too much.  I would like to be called “Dad” or at least “Big Daddy” but Karen refuses to be a “Big Momma” and how can you have a Big Daddy without a Big Momma?  But I digress.

Can you imagine, the pedantic, choleric, ex-Pharisee Paul, who until recently did not even pronounce the name of God—YHWH—now invited the Roman Church to call God “Daddy?”  Imagine the old stuffed shirt Jewish Christians in the congregation praying “Our Daddy, who art in heaven, halloweth be thy name!”  Ha!  It is embarrassing.

8:15 For you did not receive the spirit of slavery leading again to fear, 18 but you received the Spirit of adoption, 19 by whom 20 we cry, “Abba, Father.” 8:16 The Spirit himself bears witness to 21 our spirit that we are God’s children. 8:17 And if children, then heirs (namely, heirs of God and also fellow heirs with Christ) 22 – if indeed we suffer with him so we may also be glorified with him. (Net Bible)

But it is true.  He is our Daddy,  Abba Father.  It is not cool, but it is true.  God the Creator of the universe, is so intimate, so wonderful, so loving, that he invites us to call him Daddy.  Wow!  Now that is an Easter message.

Rutherford

Thursday, January 7th, 2010

Rutherford is a freethinking sojourner hippy that is always primed for a pot of tea and a good beat to jive with. Held down by nothing but his own physical form, he travels the world with a backpack of only essentials, except for one luxury; his precious worn copy of Søren Kierkegaard’s journal.

Life to Rutherford was all about living passionately. A shared libation to conversation, he conveyed how it was our responsibility to bring meaning into our own lives. Our experiences were to annex our substance. There really is no good or evil measured by an objective standard, just obstacles to overcome in order to refine our internal spirits. He viewed himself as a free individual with an excited lament, his proverbial angst, at struggling through life as a writer and musician.

Music lessons were out of the question. Only those who wished to kill their creativity would pull out books, mimic a tutor, be unintentionally harnessed by preconditioning. The only way to learn was to connect to the soul. Delicately leaning over his instrument he would tune his instrument. His long brown curly hair drooped over his eyes like a veil partitioning him off from the world. He fingers would pass up and down the neck placing pressure in unplanned rhythm, not for an audience, but purely, unselfishly, surrendering to the guitar until it and his soul were in harmony. Slightly less than all the time, his guitar twanged to some celestial orchestra that the physical world around him was inept and ill fit to hear. And it showed, painfully on the faces of onlookers.

“The task must be made difficult, for only the difficult inspires the noble-hearted”- Søren Kierkegaard

Evoking the Spirit of Isaiah

Tuesday, December 8th, 2009

The task ahead of us is to live and evoke the spirit of Isaiah in our community. As the theologian Walter Brueggemann, and others like him, argue, our task is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a conscious­ness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us. And increasingly that culture is become inimical to the Gospel. Either way, a community rooted in the Lordship of Jesus Christ is a curiosity and a threat in such a culture. No wonder Isaiah’s argument that one should rely on a faithful, historical God was such a threatening message to His generation. And to ours. Our world does not understand, much less believe in our history. God is not to be trusted because He cannot be quantified. He is not to be controlled. This God makes self-proclaimed kings of the earth uncomfortable. And this God of ours, therefore, has been making kings like Herod, Ahab, and Nero uncomfortable for ages. I remember a simple, powerful Gospel Song that all of us in our 1966 Southern church sang. This was the song of the redeemed. But we scarcely knew it. “Jesus loves the little children. . . red and yellow black and white, they are precious in His sight.” Since I was still too young to doubt the veracity of my parents and teachers, I actually believed that song. And, when I started living that song it changed my world. And when enough people live that message we will change our world. Our cause will become holy, our witness worthy of the Gospel. There will be opposition. But our song brings hope, life, and salvation. So it is worth it. Be bold and courageous, young people, and sing a new song. Do your best on the SAT to bring glory to Him. And become a light to this new generation!

4 MILLION AND GROWING!

Monday, November 30th, 2009

Finally, what does it mean to the future of America to have 4 million of its best, brightest, and spirit filled students graduating from the most prestigious universities in the world? What will it mean to have four million new business persons, artists, authors, military officers, business leaders, and government leaders who are spirit-filled evangelical Christians? I can feel the ground shaking!!!!

PRACTICALLY SPEAKING

Friday, November 27th, 2009

Practically speaking:

  • Find a local church before you go to college. Go to the first service you can.
  • Parents should meet the local pastor and introduce themselves.
  • Participate in a local Christian group—Navigators, Inter-varsity, et al. But that does not substitute for a local church.
  • Purpose to live a Godly life before you face temptation.
  • Set up a study schedule that is a priority only behind your devotional life.
  • Practice courtship.
  • Expect persecution. The main persecution you will receive will be about your profession that Christ is the only way, the only truth, the only life.
  • Summer school can be a spiritual and financial opportunity for you. You can participate in mission trips that may count for academic credit and may also help you grow spiritually. Also, summer school may be a cost-effective way to accelerate your college experience and thereby save money for you and your parents.
  • Avoid all appearance of evil.
  • Write from a Christian perspective but do not allow your confessional stand to be an excuse for shoddy work.
  • You will probably not be able to choose your roommate before you first arrive. But you can choose your roommate for your sophomore year. Choose wisely.
  • Pray for your unsaved friends.
  • Know the Truth.
  • Live the Truth.
  • Work hard and be the best follower of Christ that you can be!

WHAT TO DO IN COLLEGE

Thursday, November 26th, 2009

Next, once we understand the world to which you are called there are several things I want to see happen to you.

Make sure that you know who you are and who your God is. “By faith, Moses, when he had grown up refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter.” (Hebs. 11:24)

Refuse to be absorbed into the world but choose to be a part of God’s kingdom. You are special and peculiar generation. Much loved. But you live among a people who do not know who they are. A people without hope. You need to know who you are—children of the Living God—and then you musmust live a hopeful life.

Take responsibility for your life. Moses accepted responsibility for his life. “He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time.” (Hebs. 11: 25) If you don’t make decisions for your life, someone else will.

Get a cause worth dying for. Moses accepted necessary suffering even unto death. You need a cause worth dying for (as well as living for). “He [Moses] regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward.” (Hebs. 11: 26). Evangelicals know that we are crucified with Christ, yet it is not we who live but Christ who lives in us (Gals 2:20).

Never ever take your eyes off the goal. “By faith, he left Egypt, not fearing the king’s anger; he persevered because he saw Him who is invisible.” (Hebs. 11:27). How long can you wait? How long can you persevere? What is your threshold of obedience?

The following are ten moral issues that must be clear in your mind before you go to college:

  • Punishment and blame: What is fair punishment? Do you accept your authority’s right to enforce laws?
  • Property: What is property and who owns it?
  • Affiliation roles: What is a family? What are the motivations and obligations of a good family/ community member?
  • Laws and statues: When if ever should laws be disobeyed?
  • Life: What makes life valuable? Is life inviolable?
  • Truth & Contracts: What is the truth? Why is truth telling valuable? Are there inviolable covenants that human beings must make?
  • Government: What is a good citizen?
  • Social justice: What are basic political, economic, and social rights?
  • Sexuality: Is sex merely a biological response or is it related to religious or social guidelines?