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.