Posts tagged with “rest”
What to do as a Christian fresher
Posted at 10:19 PM
In just under a week, freshers will be arriving at Sussex University. Two years ago, Ed Goode wrote his advice to new Christian students; here’s my version.
Join a church
No one can make it alone as a Christian, and living as a student is no exception. You’ll probably be challenged about what you believe, whether in lectures or down the pub. There will be pressure to conform to a sinful culture; many Christians flirt with temptation rather than fleeing, and regret it later. You need people to support you and challenge you because they love and care for you. As a Christian you’re already part of God’s worldwide church, so make it a priority to join a local church community. Church will help you grow as a Christian, so find somewhere where as God’s Word is taught people grow to love Jesus more, love each other more and love the lost more.
Join the CU
Christian Unions are mission teams made up of students from different local churches, united around the gospel in order to better reach students with the good news of Jesus. In short, they exist to make Christ known on campus. Join your CU to get involved in student mission; to be better equipped to reach your friends with the gospel; and to be encouraged as you work as a team to bring others to know Jesus.
Join other societies/do other things!
God’s made a good world, with so many great things in it. Don’t do what I did in my first year and do so many Christian things you don’t have time to play football/sing in a choir/join the wine circle/get involved in student politics/act in a play/go to the pub with coursemates. Not only is it wrong to think such things are “less spiritual” (all of life is for God’s glory!), if you throw yourself into loads of Christian meetings to the exclusion of all else, you’ll find opportunities for mission few and far between. This is my biggest regret about my first year at university. Do something to get outside of the Christian bubble, even if it’s simply spending time with your flatmates!
Work hard, rest well
It may not feel like it sometimes, but you’re at university to study for a degree. This is a good thing to do! Your attitude to your work is a great witness to others, but more importantly God asks us to work as if working for him. My experience is that you actually enjoy your work more the more effort you put in; this is possibly my second biggest regret of my first year, as I didn’t get much out of it academically.
You also need rest, which may seem impossible during freshers’ week, but getting into good habits early on really does help. The temptation is to stay up late like everyone else, because you feel like you’ll miss out on making friendships, especially early on. God knows what you need though, and one of those things is sleep; you will not lose all your friends if you go to bed before them! (You may well find they’re waiting for someone else to suggest going to bed…) Naps are also useful, if you have been up late; caffeine less so. (I wrote about a similar topic back in my second year, on being idle and making work an idol.)
Learn to love
Your flatmates might “borrow” your food, or not do the washing up, or wake you up after a late night out. Your lecturers might not be very good, or overly harsh, and can sometimes be ridiculed or hated by others. You might meet people in the CU with whom you disagree: on theology, on style of meeting, on whether Jesus would have joined the Conservative or Labour Party, on all sorts of things you hold dear. God hasn’t put you with these people and in these situations to annoy you: he’s given you an opportunity to learn to love people. This is important with non-Christians, but possibly even more so with Christians. If members of the CU don’t love each other, that’s not a good witness. If they do love each other, learning to put aside secondary issues because they agree on the core truths of the gospel, it’s a far better witness. Graham Beynon quotes Francis Schaeffer:
Francis Schaeffer said that this love and unity were the “final apologetic”. That is, the ultimate defense of the truth of the gospel. He wrote this: “Love – and the unity it attests to – is the mark Christ gave Christians to wear before the world. Only with this mark may the world know that Christians are Christians and that Jesus was sent by the Father.” (p. 92, Graham Beynon, God’s New Community, IVP.)
Summary
University is a great opportunity for so many things, but above all to grow to know and love Jesus more, and so love other people more, through living and speaking for him in your academic work, your time with friends, your CU involvement and in your church family. My prayer is that you’ll do just that!
With a busy term ahead…
Posted at 4:46 PM
The student worker at my church had some good words to say to us students while round his house on Sunday – paraphrased and condensed massively here.
Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving. Colossians 3:23-24, NIV
Two perils when it comes to work:
Being idle. We’re told to work, whatever we do, with all of our hearts, as we are serving Christ through it. The temptation can be to do the least we can get away with, even with a “good” motivation of leaving lots of time to serve the CU. That’s not the attitude we should have. We work hard! We’re serving Christ through our degree work, just as much as our involvement with the CU.
Making work an idol. You’ve got to love homophones. It’s also possible, at the other extreme, to make your work all that you care about. Those particular exam results become your focus, not God – you work to achieve a first, not to serve God. Yet we’re told to work as if for the Lord, because it is the Lord we’re serving. If we understand that, we’ll not idolise our work. As a result, we’ll be able to take time off and rest as well – which God made us to do too! God made work; work is good. It’s only good, however, when it’s in its right place. Money, marriage or music are gifts from God which, if we put them in the primary position, don’t ever satisfy. If we accept them as a gift from God, our ultimate treasure, then money, marriage and music are wonderful and we can appreciate them for what they are. It’s very similar with work. We’re designed to work, but also to take time off.
What’s this mean then in brief? Firstly, don’t be lazy. Secondly, get some rest!