Eight Things to Keep When You Go to College

 

Note: Today, I am answering a time-specific question from my mailbag. The series on marriage will resume next week.

 

          It is the only time I have seen my Dad cry. We were standing together on a gravel parking lot in Indiana. We had just unloaded my stuff, schlepping it up the stairs into my dorm room at Hyles-Anderson College. It was just him and me. He looked at me, got a weird choking sound in his throat, and said, “I feel like I’m losing my right arm.” I had in me a curious mix of trepidation and excitement, with a dash of sorrow for my parents thrown in. But it was time. Time for me to build my own life. The world was my oyster. Let’s goooooooo!

          There are several before and afters in my life, events from which all that flowed was different than that which went before. Leaving for college was one of those. As we speak, all across America, young men and women are experiencing this precise moment in their lives. Just this week, someone I care about left home to attend Bible college in another state. They asked me for advice. Today’s post is my answer.

          Here are eight things to keep when you go to college.

Keep Your Mind Open 

          I do not know who said it first, but it was well said: "A mind is like a parachute; it only functions when open." I am known for being stubborn, for clinging with determination to positions and ideas. I think there is wisdom in this, generally speaking. But if you are not willing to listen to an alternate view or weigh the considered merits of another idea, do not go to college. It will be a waste of time and money.

          If you have chosen your school carefully, then show up with a mind open to the influences you will find there. Obviously, one should never accept any idea or person whole cloth, but the main idea of going to school is learning something new to become something better. So soak it all in.

          I am not talking about the truth. Truth, though debatable, is not relative or plural. But so much about life and ministry is. If you have grown up in a stable home and church environment you have been granted a huge blessing. By the same token, you also almost certainly have a rather narrow, parochial view formed by the culture of your home, your community, and your church. One of the great benefits of going away to college is not only exposure to an entirely different culture, but exposure to young people from a wide variety of cultures. College exposed me to a much wider perspective than I would have experienced otherwise. It expanded my vision, but only because I was receptive enough to keep my mind open. 

Keep Your Walk With God 

          There will never be a time or stage or age in your life when you do not need the Lord. Your soul will always need to be fed with the Word of God. Your spirit must needs constantly fly to the Lord for refuge. And this is true no matter how rich the spiritual environment in which you live.

          You will be busy. Keep your walk with God anyway. You will be pulled in ten different directions by priorities that scream at you, demanding time and attention. Keep your walk with God anyway. If you attend a Bible college, you will spend hours in the Word of God every day of the week. Keep your walk with God anyway.

          No professor or mentor can replace it. No spirit of enthusiasm can replace it. Constant chapel services and church services cannot replace it. Nothing can. The most important thing you will do each day while you are away at school is to carve out a few minutes alone with God somewhere. Open your Bible, open your heart, and let Him minister grace and truth to your soul and spirit.

Keep Your Budget 

          The typical independent Baptist young person going to college is largely self-funding. In plain speech, you are paying your own way. Many people will solemnly tell you what a crime that is. I am not one of them. It is exceedingly helpful. It will push you, and you must be pushed if you are going to develop into a helpful tool for the Lord's use. I paid every dime necessary for the diploma that hangs on the wall in my office. That process was as important to me as anything else that happened while I was in school.

          None of the above paragraph, though, is the point. Here is the point: the only way you are ever going to accomplish that is serious discipline – time management discipline, relationship discipline, academic discipline, emotional discipline, and financial discipline. A budget is not complicated. Your income must exceed your outgo. Make one. Stick to it religiously. If you have to take a semester off to make money, fine. If you have to eat bad dining hall food, fine. If you have to walk to work in the rain and snow, fine. If you have to wash your clothes in the sink, fine. But stay on budget.

          I graduated with a Bachelor of Theology degree four years after I enrolled, and I had zero debt when I walked across that platform. I drove a beater, wore old clothes, and functioned on little sleep because I worked so much, but I got that degree without debt. In today’s world, and tomorrow’s too probably, that is priceless.

          Keep your budget.

Keep Your Schedule

          At first, college will feel like camp, only better. Everyone will be excited. All the experiences will be fresh. You will make new friends every day. The world will be happy with you, and you with the world.

          …for a time. Gradually and inevitably, however, what was thrilling will become sheer drudgery. Emotion will not keep you going; character will. Your body will demand more sleep; your character will haul you out of bed in time (barely) for your first class. Your friends will beckon to you at the snack shop; your character will send you back to an empty dorm room to do your reading. Your mind will insist you cannot carry the workload; character will prevent you from dropping a class. In our world, the independent Baptist world, you cannot graduate from school without character. That is awesome, actually.

          When it is time for class, go to class. When you have only twenty minutes to eat lunch, eat lunch in twenty minutes. When your alarm goes off, get out of bed. Do the next right thing, no matter what else you want to do at the moment. Live by schedule. Let it be the boss of your life.

          You can thank me later.

Keep Your Purity 

          I was startled to see him. I was in California for a pastor's conference. It had been close to twenty years since I had last seen him. In the intervening time, he had planted a church or two and been faithful to the Lord. He still is.

          He walked up to me, held out his hand, and said, “Hello, Bro. Brennan, it is good to see you.” Awkwardly but sincerely, I looked him in the eye, reached for that hand, and said something similar. We parted a minute or two later, and I have not seen him since that day.

          Why does this matter? Because he married my girlfriend. She and I dated for most of two years at college, and I thought we were going to get married. Life went in a different direction. I am thrilled with the woman God led me to and the family I have. I am sure he feels the same as I do decades later.

          Here is the thing: I looked him in the eye and shook his hand, and my conscience was clear. I had nothing to be ashamed of. I had taken nothing from him of what was rightfully his. There are numerous reasons to cultivate moral purity – your relationship with God, to keep a clear head, because you agreed to keep the rules, because immorality is deceitful, etc. – but one that is rarely thought of is your conscience.

          Keep your purity. Someday, you may find yourself shaking hands at a meeting two decades later, and your conscience will be mighty grateful to you.

Keep Your Roots 

          The early months of college are a whirlwind of experiences, emotions, and relationships. Excellent. Plunge in. Seriously, soak it all up. Throw open your mind and your heart and let the world in. The teaching will be world-class. The music will make you shout. The preaching will be endlessly interesting and convicting. The friendships will be fast and deep.

          …but do not forget the folks back home. No matter where you go in life or who you become or who you become it with, to your Mom and Dad, you are the same person. In a similar yet different way, just as you will never outgrow your need for the Word of God, you will never outgrow your parents. When you go home for the holidays, spend your first evening with them. When you pass the hard test, tell them. When that first date turns into the third or fourth, tell them. When you need prayer, tell them. When you succeed or when you fail or when you just muddle along, share it with them. You do not understand this yet, but you are their entire world. Try to remember that when you are building your own world.

          And do not forget the folks at your home church either. They loved you, ministered to you, were patient with you, taught you, served with you first. You will hear a thousand preachers better than your pastor while you are at school, but never let him think that. Your pastor is better than all of them put together, anyway. He is your shepherd; they are just preachers rotating in and out of your life for a time. Ask his counsel and listen to it. Let his lifetime of wisdom infuse your decision-making and thought process. Let your gratitude remain as continual as his influence.

          They say you can never go home again. They may be right. So when you leave home, do not leave your roots. Keep them. And you will always be able to go home.

Keep Your Cool 

          Pressure does funny things. Hundreds of feet underwater, it cracks rivets and sows terror in the hearts of submariners. In the military, it produces Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and 22 veteran suicides every day. In the ministry, it breaks up marriages and brings devastation to a family and a church. In the police department, it brings unjustified shootings and the riots that follow. And hundreds of feet underground, it slowly turns coal into diamonds.

          When – and mark that I said when, not if – the pressure comes to you, keep your cool. Martyn Lloyd-Jones said, “Faith is a refusal to panic.” I love that. When you fail a class, keep your cool. When your car breaks down for the third time in a week, keep your cool. When you get unjustified demerits, keep your coal. When you think your professor is heretical, keep your cool. When you have too much month at the end of your money, keep your cool. When your boyfriend breaks up with you, keep your cool. When you get laid off, keep your cool. When you fall asleep in church, and someone accuses you of not loving the Lord, keep your cool. About the only exercise some people get is jumping to conclusions; let them. But keep your cool.

          Precious little is built well when you build in a frazzled panic, your life included. Keep your cool.

Keep Your Eyes On Jesus 

          If you can only remember one of these, remember this one. Jesus is both the means and aim of our Christian life. It is His Calvary love which redeemed you and His grace alone that can sustain you. No goal He does not prize is worth a bucket of warm spit. No applause other than His matters in the end. No one else is worthy of your heart’s fire, your arm’s vigor, and your life’s service.

          The devil wants you focused anywhere but Christ. He will troll you, condemn you, deceive you, worry you, anger you, distract you, tempt you, gaslight you, flatter you, attack you, befriend you, sympathize with you, buy you off, beat you down, and a dozen other things in an effort to abort your usefulness to the Lord. He will give you a score of reasons to quit. Some of them will be genuine; most will not. He will seek to redirect you ever so slightly away from the mark God is aiming you at.

          Ignore them all. You have the Holy Spirit indwelling you. You have the grace of God available to you. You have a Book sufficient for your needs. Tell the devil to go back to the hell that spawned him and look to Christ.

          Someday soon, we will kneel before the Throne. I hope I am near you. I want to see your face when you hear, Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord. (Matthew 25.21) As the hymnwriter said, “It will be worth it all.”

          No matter who does what or says what, no matter the circumstance that arises, no matter the unbridgable gulf or unclimbable barrier between you and the will of God, keep your eyes on Jesus.

          He is enough.

           

 

 

 

 

 

 

How to Have A Good Fight

 

Marriage 25

 

          Every union of two people will come to inevitable disagreements over time. Each gender has different strengths, and each individual has different personalities. Conflict happens, even in the best of marriages. Last week, we looked at the philosophy of a good fight. In a marital disagreement, our intent ought to be to understand what the other person is thinking and feeling so that we may minister grace to them. This week, I want to give you seven practical ideas to help you do so.

First, choose your fight time wisely.

Do not fight when the discussion must be hurried by the rush of time or

events. This will entirely shortcut understanding. Do not fight in public. More than just bad form, it defeats one of the cardinal purposes of marriage: publicly representing the love Christ has for His church. Do not fight in the heat of emotion. As a rule, the more emotion you experience, the less thinking you do. Logic may lead to emotion, but the reverse rarely happens. As well, do not fight upon first coming together i.e. waking up in the morning, returning from work in the evening. Let your (re) unions be peaceful and happy.

          Second, do not interrupt each other.

It is natural to want to defend yourself when you feel you are being misrepresented or even misunderstood. But your whole approach in this fight is not to make yourself understood; it is to understand your partner. The more they talk, the more chance you will have of getting to the root of their real thoughts and feelings. So let them talk.

          One particular book I read on marriage spoke of a couple that had trouble in this precise area. They could not keep from interrupting each other. So, they devised the spoon rule. When it was time for a fight, one of them brought a spoon. Whoever was holding the spoon got to talk. And only one person could hold the spoon at a time. Maybe you should bring a spoon to your next fight.

          Three, use soft words to reveal your hurt.   

          Words mean things. The things those words mean are amplified when they are spoken in emotion by someone for whom you care deeply. “You are a _________________ son of a ____________ for …” lands entirely differently than, “I don’t think you meant to come across this way when you did… but this is how I felt when you did it.” I know grown men and women who still struggle with something their parents voiced to them decades ago, voiced in a harsh manner. Words are tools that reveal what we think and feel, and no tool should be used as a weapon.

          Fourth, boomerang their comments.   

          When it is your turn to speak, you ought to begin by reiterating what you understood them to say. "What I heard you say was… Did I get that right?" Often, the one most hurt is the one not communicating clearly. As such, clarifying statements like this reveal that lack of communication and allow it to be resolved before the hurt metastasizes.

          Fifth, resist the temptation to bring up past issues.

          In a trial, a judge must rule carefully on what past events a prosecutor is allowed to bring up for precisely this reason. Past hurled forward is prejudice. I agree that context is often helpful in resolving issues; I disagree that context needs to be developed in granular detail. When you bring up the past, you make the current argument too big and too complicated to deal with in one conversation. Additionally, your memory and interpretation of those events are often one-sided, if not downright unfair. Deal with the problem at hand, not ten years' worth of complaints. If you keep short accounts with each other, you will find it most helpful here.

          Six, make what is important to them important to you.

          At the risk of being too transparent, let me tell you about the only time Mandy almost left me. We had not been married more than a year or two when I returned from work to find her suitcase packed and sitting in the hall. We had had an argument that morning, and in the course of the argument, I had uttered an entirely forgettable throwaway phrase, "You're an idiot." It was a phrase I had said a thousand times to a thousand people in my life. What I did not know was that this phrase was deeply painful to her and always had been. It was not to me. To me, it was just the way people talked when they were venting. To her, it was highly offensive, provoking enough to cause her to pack her bags to go home to Momma for a night or two.

          When I discovered this, I was flabbergasted. If anything was idiotic, overreacting to being called an idiot seemed to be a perfect example. But as I processed it, I realized it did not matter how it felt to me; it mattered how it felt to her. It was important to her that I not call her an idiot. Since that day, I never have.

          Seventh, above all, remember your goal is to know and understand the other person. If you will pursue that knowledge and understanding, you will almost always find wisdom arrives with it. In other words, once you know how and why they did what they did and feel how they feel, you will know how best to respond. And your response will be edifying.

          “Pastor Brennan, you keep talking about a good fight. I thought fights were never good.”

          If you will do these seven things it will be a good fight. Because good will come out of it.     

The Philosophy of A Good Fight

 

Marriage 24

 

          Love and hurt come together. Love is created and nurtered in an atmosphere of trust, openness, and vulnerability but these very things create the potential for emotional pain. When we love and are misunderstood, we hurt. When we love and are disappointed, we hurt. When we love and are rejected, we hurt. When we love and are ignored, we hurt. When we love and are frustrated, we hurt. Etc.

          There are good and bad ways to respond to this hurt. One of the poorer responses, however, is all too common—they lash out in attack.

What next? When we (unintentionally or intentionally) hurt the one we love and they lash out in attack the question then comes: What next? Often, our reflexes kick in and we automatically defend ourselves. Alternatively, if we have a bit more self-control we respond with silence. Sometimes, we attempt a hurried, conversation-stopping apology so as to head off more verbal fireworks. Worse yet, we react to attack by an attack of our own.  

The Apostle Paul gives us a helpful screen to strain all of our conversations, including marital. Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers. (Ephesians 4.29) In this context, I am forced to recognize that defending myself when I am attacked does not minister grace. Attacking my attacker, in turn, certainly does not minister grace either. There is wisdom in silence, and sometimes, simply taking in our partner's anger is the most gracious thing we can do, but other times, silence is not golden; it is just plain yellow. Nor is a conversation-shortening apology going to minister grace either, for all it does is wall off the problem without dealing with it.

Most of these are bad options most of the time because none of them deal with the hurt back of the attack. To deal with the hurt I must understand what caused it so that I may strive to avoid causing it again. It then follows that I must know what they are thinking or feeling in order to understand what caused the attack.

Solomon tells us this in relation to the family dynamic in Proverbs 24.3, Through wisdom is an house builded; and by understanding it is established. There must needs be a good how and a good why in dealing with the verbal attacks that happen in every marriage from time to time. Peter builds on this specifically in the context of marriage. Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel. (I Peter 3.7) In a fight, I need to know what we are fighting about (knowledge), how to respond best in that fight (wisdom), and why I ought to respond that way (understanding).

What ought to be my overall goal in these types of conversations? To minister grace. To do that, I need three things: knowledge, wisdom, and understanding. Practically speaking, when I defend myself, attack them in turn, ignore them in sullen silence, or cut off the conversation with a hurried apology, I gain none of these things. Responding so unwisely adds little to my necessary base of knowledge and understanding and thus prevents me from ministering grace.

Grasping this, what is my aim in a good fight? When I am attacked, what philosophical thought process should guide my response? Simply this: I want to know and understand my partner. Defending myself is not a priority. Calming them down is often helpful but only sometimes a priority. Defusing the situation so we return to the status quo is not the priority either. I want to know what my partner feels and why they feel that way. Only with this knowledge and understanding may I respond in wisdom to minister grace.

The most crucial thing in a fight is to understand each other.

Next week, we will talk about how to do that.     

 

         

Decide to Love

 

Marriage 23

 

          There may not be a worse phrase in the English language than “fall in love.” In today’s post, I intend to prove that to you scripturally. More importantly, I want to permanently remove from your mind the validity of falling out of love with your mate.

          It is undeniable that a husband is emphatically told to love his wife. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it. (Ephesians 5.25) Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them. (Colossians 3.19) A wife is also instructed to love her husband. That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children. (Titus 2.4) Yet I know what it is like to have spouses sit in my office and tell me, “I just don’t love her/him anymore.”

          This marriage-killing excuse is rational if love is something that happens to you by accident, a feeling that is produced in you by another person's actions. But such an approach to love, while widely held in our society, has no basis in Scripture. Love is not an accident. Love is not a reaction on your part to how likable or nice others are toward you. Love has feeling, but it is not a feeling. Love is an attitude of affection and giving on your part which you choose to extend to another. In short, love is a choice you can decide to offer to someone.

          If I am right, each partner permanently loses the right to say to the other, "I don't love you anymore," because that partner has become unlovable or someone else has become more lovable. If I am right, each partner permanently loses the justification for falling out of love.

          So why do I assert this? What is my scriptural support?

          I say this first because love is a decision of the will. I will love thee, O Lord, my strength. (Psalm 18.1) The psalmist’s love for God was not based on his perception or knowledge of or reaction to God’s goodness; it was based on a decision of the will.

          I say this second because love is a command. Eight times in Scripture we are faced with the command to love our neighbor. Twelve times we are told to love one another. Additionally, husbands and wives are commanded to love each other. Indeed, the greatest commandments in the Bible revolve around mandates that we love. A command that is dependent on how another person makes you feel is nonsensical. Put another way round, if fulfilling the command to love is dependent on what another person does to make me feel something then that commandment is not a valid commandment; it is a suggestion. A command to be a command must only require God and me in order to fulfill it.

          I say this third because where God commands, He enables. For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. (II Timothy 1.7) Do not tell me you cannot love those whom God tells you to love. Tell me you do not want to anymore, that it is not enjoyable anymore, but do not tell me you cannot. The Holy Spirit gives us the wherewithal to obey these instructions just as He does other biblical mandates. The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us. (Romans 5.5) But the fruit of the Spirit is love. (Galatians 5.22)

          I say this fourth because God's love toward us is clearly not related to how lovable we are. Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God. (I John 3.1) God’s love for us is a bestowal, a choosing to love us, but to Israel in the Old Testament and to the church in the New Testament. Not a single individual reading this post will ever qualify to be loved by God; we do not qualify, we accept.

          I say this, fifth, because there is no example in Scripture of someone who stopped loving due to the recipient being unlovable. Love is mentioned 405 times in the Bible. If falling out of love is truly as prevalent as our society has trained us to think you would think it would be mentioned in there somewhere. But is is not. I cannot find one justified instance of anybody who actually loved someone not loving them anymore.

Lloys (l) and John R. Rice (r)

          Many years ago, Jack Hyles was being driven to a meeting. He was in the front passenger seat, and John R. Rice and his wife, Lloys, were seated in the back. Jack Hyles overheard the following snippet of conversation:

Lloys: John R., do you love me?

John R.: Yes

Lloys: Why do you love me?

John R.: Because God commanded me to.

Lloys: John R., that doesn’t turn me on.

John R.: But it won’t turn me off either.

          I suppose some readers may find that it strains credulity, but I do not. I have read Rice's books on marriage and the home; it tracks with their content. John R. Rice understood that the foundation of his love for his wife was not her physical attractiveness, her mental agility, her emotional brightness, or her spiritual fervor. His love for her did not depend on how well she kept the house, raised the children, or did the laundry. It did not depend on how tasty her cooking was, her response to his advances, or how well she managed the family budget. It depended instead on his willingness to be obedient to his Heavenly Father’s commands. It was thus a decision of his will.

          Love is a choice. Decide to love the one to whom you are married. Regardless of the circumstances.