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cry to God day and night that he would open your eyes to see wonderful things in his word (Ps. 119:18).
Never, never, never stop being amazed that the Bible is the communication of the Creator of the universe. It tells us things we cannot know any other way. To study it and proclaim it is an unspeakable privilege. And best of all, it is through the word that God himself comes to us and shows himself to us (1 Sam. 3:21).
Give, give, give. Give out what you are learning.
Simply put, students’ heads often pick up on theology faster than their hearts and lives.
the seminarian can say a lot of things he can’t live.
What’s at stake in this situation? The church is soon to suffer. Fathead theology students parachute into local churches, where they model an insidious detachment between truth and love.
Don’t partition your devotional life from your academic pursuits. Instead, approach your studies devotionally. Be intentional to keep your mind and heart together rather than allowing them to be separated.
Call it conviction, resolve, or whatever, but the first question to answer in seminary is why you’re there. Why are you doing this? What is your rallying cry? What is the heart that pumps life into all your studies and ministry dreams?
The more of it you get, the easier it becomes to slip into a mode of life that assumes accumulated information equals gospel maturity. This is what Paul Tripp calls “academizing our faith.”
The great foundation and goal of the universe is the glory of God. The foundation and goal of your studies and ministry should be no different. More than anything else, energized by grace, you want our triune God to be high and lifted up. You treasure him. You delight in him. You hallow his name. You are committed to his fame and renown. You are about the glory of God.
Jesus came to embody and display the ways of God, and to that end, he was full of grace and truth (John 1:14).
Jonathan Edwards writes, “God glorifies himself in communicating himself, and he communicates himself in glorifying himself.”2
Therefore, for us to say that we are about the glory of God means that we are about God being seen for who he is.
The anchor that can keep our hearts steady amid all the studying is the resolve that Jesus must be tasted and treasured by us and through us.
a mission statement for seminary is the articulation of what you value the most.
“God, keep me warm to your grace. Help me to be endlessly astounded that in Jesus you’ve shown such amazing favor to such an undeserving rebel as me.”
First, seek to make your seminary studies devotional. Pray for God’s help before class, before studying, before writing a paper or taking a test, and during all these activities. Continually consecrate your studies to Jesus and ask him to freshly meet you in them, keep your spiritual blood flowing, and keep you soft to his grace.
Whatever the assignment, intentionally seek the growth and warming of your soul. There’s no spiritually neutral gear when handling the Bible. You don’t need to learn the lesson far too many have experienced about trifling with holy things—you either survive or shrivel.
Your chief goal is to encounter God.
The point is that God doesn’t just show to show; he shows for a purpose. And the purpose is his people’s joy in him. God gives a view of his glory—the display of who he is—to effect something in us, namely, value, esteem, love, and delight for and in him.
Prayer is our fitting response to God making himself known.
Prayer is where we agree with God that he is who he says he is and we are who he says we are.
God has made himself known, and he has made himself known to you, drawing you into his fellowship. He is your God, your Father, Jesus your Savior, the Spirit your Comforter.
Weakness means we don’t have what it takes. It means we are not sovereign, omniscient, or invincible. We are not in control, we don’t know everything, and we can be stopped. Weakness means that we desperately need God.
The truth is, you are weak all around. You are weak, plain and simple. But in your weakness, God has called you, and therefore you have entered seminary for theological training. You go to seminary to grow, yes. You go to seminary to learn and steward your gifts, absolutely. But here’s the thing: the goal of seminary is not to become unweak.
Therefore, determine to be known less for your strengths in academic rigor and more for how that rigor helps you grasp what it means that the God-man was crucified to save the world. Embrace your weakness. Bring it all back to grace.
Even as unique and important as the seminary experience may be, you shouldn’t abdicate your family responsibilities to that “only a season” talk. If you’re a husband and dad now, then you’re a husband and dad now. What God intends for the heads of families, he intends for you, no matter what your schedule looks like or how important that paper that’s due next week.
However clear your subjective sense of “a call to the ministry” may seem to you, the objective calling to be a husband and father is much clearer.
Ten Things to Pray for Your Wife God, be her God—Be her all-satisfying treasure and all. Make her jealous for your exclusive supremacy in all her affections (Ps. 73:24–25). Increase her faith—Give her a rock-solid confidence that your incomparable power is always wielded only for her absolute good in Christ (Rom. 8:28–30). Intensify her joy—Fill her with a joy in you that abandons all to the riches of your grace in Jesus and that says firmly, clearly, and gladly, “I’ll go anywhere and do anything if you are there” (Ex. 33:14–15). Soften her heart—Keep her from cynicism, and make her tender to
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An essential mark of a solid seminary experience is continually being stunned by how everything relates to Jesus. When you look long enough, press hard enough, and feel deeply enough, you discover again and again that it all comes back to him.
The whole universe is about Jesus. The whole Bible is about Jesus. Our whole lives are designed to be about Jesus. And any seminary experience worth a dime should be all about Jesus as well.
You simply need to go in conscious (and stay aware) of the need to unswervingly and shamelessly keep Jesus at the core—to keep both eyes peeled for him everywhere. Ferociously resist the inertia away from Jesus.
Charles Spurgeon asks, “Would it not be better to see him where he is not than to miss him where he is?” I love to find Jesus everywhere—not by twisting the Psalms and other Scriptures to make them speak of Christ when they do nothing of the kind, but by seeing him where he truly is. I would not err as Cocceius did, of whom they said his greatest fault was that he found Christ everywhere, but I would far rather err in his direction than have it said of me, as of another divine of the same period, that I found Christ nowhere!1
So keep both eyes peeled for Jesus. Relentlessly make him the explicit center of all your learning, as you keep him as the conscious focus of all your life.
All of life, cradle to grave, is real life in God’s economy. For the Christian, there is no interlude, no pause, no “season” when we put the main things on hold to prepare for the next.
And the way to stay Christian in the long run is be a Christian every day. Walk daily in light of God’s fascinating and extraordinary grace to us in the gospel. Fully reliant on God’s Spirit, go deep in God’s word, among God’s people.
