We’ve been seeing that with our loving Father in control, we can have confidence in the midst of the stress of exams. So what does this mean practically? Here’s a few top tips from friends of mine who’ve recently graduated.
1. Keep going in your relationship with God
Often during exams spending time with God is the first thing we drop. If we stop and think, we’ll see how crazy this is. We’re so prone to forget the grace God has lavished upon us; we need to turn to the Bible to remind us of all we have in Jesus, and give us perspective when exams are looming large. And with all the pressures of exams, the first place we should be turning is to the God who is in control of it all. This isn’t something to feel guilty about, but rather we should see how much we’re missing out on!
2. Keep going in your relationship with his people
Next on the list of things we drop is meeting with our church family. Again, if we stop and think we’ll realise this is madness. We need people around us to keep pointing us back to Jesus – people who have been there and know what it’s like, who can help keep us calm when we’re panicking. We need our broken brothers and sisters around us to take us out of ourselves as we seek to love them back. We need the care of our pastors and our small groups to keep us going.
3. Rest well
It may seem counter-intuitive, but taking a day off a week really helps you work better the other six days. Taking regular breaks can refresh you and make it easier to concentrate; why not use them to pray, or to send an encouraging text to a friend who you know is struggling too?
4. Find out where you work best
For some, they need the peace and quiet of their own room; for others, they need the social buzz of a coffee shop. Some find it impossible to motivate themselves if they’re on their own, and need to work in the library with a group of friends. Figure out what works for you.
5. Plan your revision
Whether you love colour-coded timetables or hate the very thought, having some kind of plan is essential. Plan in breaks, so that you don’t feel guilty about them. If you can, treat revising like a job, which you can leave in the library and so rest properly in the evening.
6. Be healthy!
Eat some fruit. Go for a walk. Don’t stay up late. So often we’re stressed because we’re not looking after ourselves. Tea and hobnobs are great for revision sessions, but don’t live off them. Energy drinks may seem great at the time, but the restless night’s sleep afterwards means it’s often not worth it. Our physical, mental and spiritual health are more linked than we think!
There’s probably more that could be said, but that’s enough for now. More advice can be found over on Facebook. (Catch up on part one and part two.)
Last time we looked at three amazing truths to encourage us in the midst of exams. We saw that we are children of God, and so have a new identity that doesn’t rely on exam success. We saw that our Father is in control, so we can have confidence that he is using all of the pressure and stress for our good. Finally we were reminded that we don’t have to earn his love – that any achievement (or lack of it) doesn’t affect God’s love for us, so we don’t have to prove ourselves to him.
That’s all very well, you might say, but how is this going to help me, really? What does it look like to live this out? Let’s take them one by one:
You are a child of God. What do children do with their parents? They talk about every little thing: their worries, their interests, their feelings. Does a little kid think his problems aren’t worth bothering his parents with? No – he asks them for help, because they’re his mum and dad. Jesus encourages us to talk to our Father in the same way: “how much more [than earthly parents] will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:11). So don’t let the pressure of exams stop you spending time with him. Instead, talk to him about everything. He’s your Father. He loves to listen.
Your Father is in control. God knew your exam timetable and the questions in the paper before the creation of the world. There may not be enough time to do the revision you feel you need; the questions might be terribly unfair. God is not surprised. Knowing this, it’s possible to relax (yes, really!). There’s nothing you can do about it, but that’s okay. Do what you can, then rest easy – whatever the result, your loving Father is still in control.
You don’t have to earn his love. Maybe you’ve been lazy throughout the year, and now it’s come back to bite you. You feel your difficulties are payback for your lack of studying, and so you kill yourself with work to make up for it. But God’s love is not earned. Yes, sin has its consequences (not studying sooner generally makes exams harder!), but your status before God is just as secure as before. Rest in his love – and then get to work, confident that God will keep loving you whatever the results.
Knowing God doesn’t lift you out of the stress. God being in control doesn’t mean he’ll give us an easy ride. But God is the God who sent his Son to join us in the mess and struggles of this world. He’s not a far removed kind of God, but a God who has come close to us in Jesus. Knowing this God in the midst of the stress can transform the whole experience, and speak volumes to those around us about where our confidence ultimately lies.
Catch up on part one here, then have a read of part three.
Your body feels tense, and your palms start to sweat. Your craving for ice cream reaches a new peak. Your hands start to shake from too many Red Bulls and a lack of sleep. Lecture notes from last term suddenly seem incomprehensible, and you develop an unhealthy fascination for daytime TV. There’s not a seat to be found at the library. The exam season has definitely arrived.
Some people seem to take exams in their stride. For the rest of us, they can be a nerve-wracking and horrible experience. A whole year’s worth of work condensed into three hours of frantic scribbling. How do we cope?
Perhaps you’ve always been a high achiever, and you’re suddenly faced with the prospect of failure. Your identity, your self-image, seems ready to crumble. Or perhaps you’ve barely scraped through, feeling out of place with all these clever people around you. You feel like a fraud about to be exposed.
Exams are about proving you have certain skills or know certain things, but we take things much further. We try to prove ourselves to our parents, to ourselves, to others – and to God. What if we can’t prove ourselves? What if the “expected” 2:1 isn’t going to happen? What if we have to retake an exam, or repeat the year?
With all these pressures and worries swimming around our heads, it can feel impossible to know where to begin. We procrastinate when we should be working, and feel guilty about not working when we should be resting. Things seem out of control, and we struggle just to keep our head above water. Everything else takes a back seat – exercise, healthy eating, spending time with God and his people.
What is the Christian response to all this? Here’s three truths to to encourage ourselves with:
You are a child of God. Christians are much loved children of a heavenly Father. The Father loves you even as he loves Jesus (John 17:23). You don’t have to be a high achiever. Your identity is not in your degree. Your place in the family is secure. You are a child of God.
Your Father is in control. Not only is God loving, but he is also powerful. Not only does he care for you in the midst of exams, but he is using them for your good. Things may seem chaotic, even hopeless – but God is using all of it to shape you to be more like Jesus (Romans 8:28-29). You don’t need to worry – your Father is in control.
You don’t have to earn his love. You don’t have to prove yourself. Pass or fail in these exams, the one verdict on you that ultimately matters has already been given (Romans 8:1). Your achievements never made God love you, and your failures won’t stop him either. His love for you is all of grace. You don’t have to earn his love.
Next time we’ll look at how we can apply these truths in the midst of the stress, as well as some practical tips for the exam period.
“Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord;
his going out is sure as the dawn;
he will come to us as the showers,
as the spring rains that water the earth.” (Hosea 6:3, ESV)
Outside my front door is a plastic box full of strawberry plants. The recent sunshine and showers have meant they are thriving – sending out lush green leaves and starting to bud. I can see the first fruit beginning to develop in the middle of the flowers.
The Bible often uses natural imagery to convey something of who God is and what he’s like. Here in Hosea we’re encouraged to “press on to know the Lord”, who will come to us as “the spring rains that water the earth”. Just as the recent rain means that my strawberry plants are flourishing, so it is with knowing the Lord – as we see more of who he is and what he’s like, we find ourselves refreshed, and our hearts are drawn to him once more.
Jesus picks up a similar theme in John 4, where he says that “whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
This spring of water “flowing from within [us]” (John 7:38-39) is the Holy Spirit, who brings eternal life. And what is the life that the Spirit brings?
“Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” (John 17:3)
The Holy Spirit pours the love of God into our hearts (Romans 5:5) so that we might know the Father and the Son. As we know more of them, our hearts are nourished and transformed. As we drink this living water, just like my plants in the spring rains, we find we grow and flourish, knowing life in its fullness, bearing much fruit.
So drink deep, doubting heart. He will come to us “as the spring rains that water the earth”, graciously bringing life to arid lives and hard hearts, always and forever overflowing with love.
Sometimes we speak about the need for teaching as if we should learn something brand new every time we open the Bible. We will learn new things, of course – I don’t deny that for a moment. But what is much more common is that we are reminded of what we know already.
Being reminded is essential. We have this horrible ability to leak truth. Having got something clear in our minds, warm in our hearts and affecting our wills, so that we know it, feel it and start to live it – that truth then gradually seeps out of us. We need to be reminded.
— Graham Beynon, Last Things First, p136
Mike Reeves helps explain what theology is, in the context of Judges 6:25-28 (quoted from DIY Theology):
Theology is smashing up idols – smashing up the idols in our mind and in our world. And not just smashing them up but replacing them with (v26) proper kinds of altars to the Lord our God: replacing them all with Jesus Christ. So the story here is: Gideon is surrounded by the idolatry of the Midianite regime. and he begins the revolution against it by bulldozing Baal. And that is theology! It’s not just reading books, studying languages, whatever: it is about rebelling against the world order, not just the Midianites little regime, rebelling against the whole world order as it rebels against God. Rebelling against it, bringing down the system, utterly replacing it: that is theology. Theology is the revolution.
Our culture defines faith as being irrational, worthy of ridicule, something to be hated, to be discarded so we can stop worrying and enjoy our lives, but above all as dangerous, nonsensical falsehood. This is the sermon our culture preaches to us, which we absorb unconsciously. Faced with these lies, what are we to do? We turn to the one who speaks truth with authority – the Lord Jesus. Reeves again:
Christian theology is about clearing out all the junk in our minds that we’ve accumulated through years of just listening to the world, and replacing it with truth. It’s putting on the mind of Christ and so sifting out the lies in our culture. It’s washing our brains with the Mediator, rather than being brainwashed by the media.
God is a God who speaks. Ultimately, he has spoken to us “by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he also made the universe” (Hebrews 1:1-2). Without God’s revelation of himself, we can’t know what is true. But God has revealed himself through Jesus: eternally God the Son has been making his Father known in the power of the Spirit, and he continues to do so today.
Theology is the “true research: as we re-search reality afresh in the light of how God has revealed it to be”; “It’s walking through life with a torch on. It’s refusing to drift with the zeitgeist”. The world is constantly bombarding us with its own truth, but it doesn’t describe reality. The Bible tells us what’s really real. It shapes how we look at the world, and speaks into every part of life. We see ourselves as we really are . Above all, we see who the God of the universe really is. And when we see more of him – our Truine God, always good, gracious and generous, over-flowing with love – we find our love for him grows and our lives are transformed.
It turns out that not only is theology incredibly practical, it’s incredibly exciting too.
(Read more by Mike Reeves: Fear and Loathing in Las Vagueness. Also related: Talking to yourself. Originally posted 23rd March 2009, revised and updated 7th May 2013.)
Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. (Colossians 3:1-4)
Christians are those who are united to Christ. This is true in the past, present and future.
Past: “For you died”. Christians have died with Christ. In him, we have passed through the death we rightly deserve. Our sin has been dealt with once for all. “You have been raised”. Dead to ourselves, alive in Christ. New birth, new life.
Present: “Hidden with Christ”. When God looks at you, what does he see? His beloved child. “Seated at the right hand of God”. Christ is seated on the throne of the universe, and we’re there with him!
Future: “Will appear with him”. When Christ returns, we will be with him, and it will be glorious.
It’s no surprise that Paul calls us to “set [our] hearts and minds on things above”. These are amazing realities to be celebrated, rejoiced in, dwelt on, sung about. What joy to spend time warming our hearts with such wonderful truths!
However… we forget. We’re leaky. These things seep out of our minds as this world preaches an alternative message. “This life is all there is – so live for the moment. Do what feels good. Make the most of it.” This world seems so solid, its pleasures so tangible, and God begins to feel distant. “Heavenly realities? More like away with the fairies.”
With all these lies ringing in our ears, we need others to help us lift our sights to see what is real. Those of deep, strong faith to give courage to the struggling. Preachers who present Christ again, that our hearts might be captured afresh. Soaking ourselves in Scripture, individually and corporately. The world is constantly fighting for our attention; let’s help each other fight back.
So Paul writes later in Colossians:
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, with gratitude in your hearts to God. (Colossians 3:16)
The word of Christ: the good news of Jesus. His death and resurrection, and our union with him.
Dwelling richly: always going deeper. Taking truths to heart, not filing them away. Longing to know more of Jesus.
Teach and admonish: lovingly speaking good news to each other, letting God’s word convict, correct and encourage.
Singing: both expressing and exciting our emotions of gratitude through singing Scriptural certainties to each other and to the Lord.
Tomorrow, as millions gather across the globe with brothers and sisters in Christ, let’s point each other to these heavenly realities. We died with him. We were raised with him. We will appear with him. Glory!