Are you looking to live a dangerous life for Christ? Are you asking yourself, What am I doing with my life? Am I really where God wants me to be? Am I really living a dangerous life FOR Christ? Do you find yourself wanting to be closer to God, but just cannot find away how? Are you close to God but you think you could be doing more? Do you listen to sermons about how God is not safe, and you imagine selling all of your things and following Christ? Are you thinking that it would be nice to get college over with so you could just get on with your life, and finally start living for God as a youth, or worship pastor? Are you thinking about just quitting college all together to join the ministry? Do you feel it would serve YOU better if YOU were somewhere else? Do you find yourself not caring about your classes? Do you think that you have to do something radical, like visit Africa, or Haiti, just so you feel like you had a spiritual adventure?
As the questions unfold is it not interesting how, they become more about us and less about God. How we managed to move from living dangerously for Christ to just living...dangerously. As college students we find ourselves asking these questions daily. We wonder what we are doing with our lives, questioning if college at Spring Arbor was the right choice. Is this where God really wants me?
I find that the answer to that question is affirmed in many ways in a very negative light. We hear of ministries and opportunity opening up all around the world. We find ourselves dissatisfied with the spiritual atmosphere of Spring Arbor and we think, there must be more than this, there just must be. We look other experiences, such as trips to Mexico, Africa, and now Haiti, to be the answer to our idea of more than this. We read books that tell us we could be doing better as a Christian, and they leave us convicted. They leave us with a fantasy of selling all that we have and just living fully and completely on the provision of God. That somehow ministry somewhere other than here is greater, than if it were executed here. These books tell us we need to stop being comfortable, strive towards danger, and that we do not have enough faith until we do something radical for Christ. We are told to stop being American, and start living only for God’s Kingdom. We are told to give up everything take up the cross, spread peace and love. To this some have given up their college career while others remain feeling guilty that they did not have the faith to give their all for Christ.
Now I want to warn my reader that I am being critical. Thus Whacking the Hive. Mission trips to foreign countries are great, I know many close friends that have been called into that type of ministry and for them not to go would be an act of disobedience to their calling. But that calling is specific to them and not to all people. Just because everything is permissible does not mean all things are beneficial. I am tired of people coming in and telling Christ following college students to stop following the status quo, shake things up and be radically on fire for Christ. (Can we all ways get more on fire for Christ--yes, can we always go closer in our faith--yes, but this is not my point.) When these people come in trying to inspire us they end up accomplishing the opposite. We feel guilty, shameful, worthless, and fearful, because we are not sure if we are read willing or even have enough faith to drop out of school and join a free loving nomadic Christian community. What is conveyed is not conviction but accusations.
I would like to propose that we have a skewed perspective of ‘radical’ and ‘dangerous’ living for Christ. Our lives as University students are a lot more radical and dangerous than we want to let on to. Lets take a closer look at our lives for example. Most of us are broke. We do not have much money to spend on luxuries, most of us do not even have a job, and we invest over $100,000 into our education here at Spring Arbor. We live in community where two to three people share a 10’x15’ living space, and over 30 people can comprise an entire floor. We invest in relationships that may or may not last longer than 4 years, we eat over priced mass produced food, we spend hours in class, and even more in the library writing papers and studying for exams. Who would honestly choose to like this way for any amount of time let alone four to eight years? Its dangerous, its radical, its revolutionary. We do not know if we will be able to pay back the school once we get out, some of us bankrupt ourselves just to say another semester. What would cause people to do something so crazy so risky so dangerous, where we are willing to risk our finical security?
The problem is that we do not think or feel that college is dangerous. Yet remember back when you were applying for colleges trying to decide where you wanted to go, and then remember the parting at the plaza and how scary that was even if you didn’t let on to it. College is dangerous, it is just we have been here so long we have become desensitized to the dangers of college. The same thing happens when we begin to learn how to drive. Driving is dangerous, we are whizzing around the world at 60, 70, 80 mph like it is nothing, but remember getting behind the wheel for the first time and 45 mph seemed too fast. Feel college is a lot like that. Driving is not less dangerous than it was before, its just we have become used to living in the danger we become accustomed to it. There are so many situations in our life where we forget just how dangerous our lives really are.
When someone is working in an occupation that is dangerous, they take extra care, extra caution, and safety is always first. When they forget that their job is dangerous, and they think they have it all under control or they do their job flippantly, they can get hurt, they can even lose their lively hood. Just think about it, mismanage funds, scholarships and grades, you could be missing out on the livelihood God has planned and called you to live. It is dangerous being a college student. It requires work. It requires sacrifice. It requires obedience. It requires discipline.
The problem is, is that we do not treat college dangerous at all, we are the furthest thing away from discipline. We dead class and homework. We hate it. We do not want to do it. We want the easy professors, with the least amount of work, we hardly ever read the material, and we show up to class when we want. Yet in doing all this we still aspire to be teachers, pastors, and other leading professionals in our field. Yet there is nothing professional about the way we live our lives as college students, yet we want to jump right into ministry or our occupation without first being educated.
There is a difference between living dangerously for Christ and just living dangerously. Take for example going to college when you are called to go to be at home to care for your family. All of a sudden choosing to stay in college changes from living dangerously for Christ to just living dangerously. The same can be true for the college student that chooses to drop out of school and start a well intentioned ministry when Christ is calling us to stay in school. The ministry is now living dangerously instead of living dangerously for Christ. he student is living dangerously and they are also placing everyone they teach in danger. There are strict biblical standards on those who teach, ones that should make us shake in fear. It is not something that we can do ill equipped.
The point that I am trying to make is that living dangerously for Christ is more than just seeking dangerous experiences, because in the end dangerous experiences will seem to become normal, there will be nothing that quite satisfies, why do you think people like Travis Pastrana has to keep pushing the limits to just get off. Yet when we life dangerously for Christ we will be rewarded, we will be filled, we will be nourished.
How do we live dangerously for Christ? Patients. Obedience. Discipline.
Christ is to be the author and prefecture of our faith, we are to lay ourselves down and let him guide us. So if we are called to a position that requires training towards a degree to obtain said position we are to do all that is required to acquire the correct training. We are called to do everything as on to the Lord. We need to start living disciplined lives. We need to strive for excellence in all that we do, especially in our school work. We need to show up for class, join the discussion in class, and read the required texts. We should seek to take the difficult professors. We can come up with all types of excuses not to do any one of these things, but the truth is if we do not start doing these things you are not living dangerously for Christ, you are just living dangerously, and that is unacceptable. The bible even goes as far as to call it pure evil.
So please consider that the time you spend in college is worth it, it is far more dangerous than we realize. The only way to become a righteous person is to be brought up and trained up in righteousness, one cannot wake up one day drop everything they were doing and join a righteous community and call themselves righteous, just as we cannot quit school, join a ministry and call ourselves a pastor. We need to be trained before we can go. God has prepared you for a time such as this. For a time of becoming, a time of training, a time of growing up and maturing in the faith, a time of learning. Be faithful, be obedient, be disciplined, you want to sacrifice yourself for the kingdom. Go to class, do your work, live in excellence.
Join me today in living a dangerous disciplined life. One worth of praise for Our King, THE KING!
I'm in.
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