Graduation
Graduation. ‘Tis the season of the year when gowns, caps and tassels are flying everywhere! From college to high school, to even Kindergarten, people are graduating-- moving up to a higher place.
We, as Christians, should be constantly setting our eyes on graduating, too. It is our goal to be always closer in our relationship with God than we were the day before. God is conforming us to His image, and while it is true that this is a process, we should be experiencing progress.
Going to several graduations lately has made me examine my own maturity (or lack thereof) in my Christian walk. Take God’s written word, for example. Not only the content of it, but the texture of it, as Conrad Gempf so aptly puts it in his recent book, Mealtime Habits of the Messiah? (See especially chapter 8, talking about Mark not liking the red-letter edition of the Bible) Do I really know what it says? Do I meditate on its meaning and application to my situations in life? Do I allow and welcome the Holy Spirit to use it in my current state to teach me, convict me, challenge me and show me deeper truths (no matter how difficult they are to handle)? Or, do I merely read quickly through my daily verses so that I am able to say to myself and others (why is that so important?) that I have read my so many chapters of the Bible for the day like a “good Christian” is supposed to do?
Even if I do read and meditate on it, Am I simply seeking the promises and encouragements in it that get me and keep me “pumped” for daily living and victory, or do I take the MEAT along with the milk? You know, the parts where God says it is a sacrifice to follow Him, that I have to put to death the things that I want, and my huge urge to be totally self-centered. (If you want to know where more of the meat is, let me know; I’ll be glad to share some that God wants to confront all of us with). Do I really want to digest and appropriate the hard things of the Word of God like verse 5 of 1 Corinthians 13, that says that mature and true love (the love that we love to say that we have) hardly takes notice of wrong done to it. Ouch! I am thankful that we have a little room in there. The “hardly even takes notice” (Living Bible) allows us to acknowledge that we have been hurt, but forces us to maturely and quickly give that over to God to heal and deal with while we respond in His love. One of the things we need to graduate into is a real, true and mature love. We can’t continue to camp in the childish love of our early conversion days. (I Cor. 13:11) Do I really seek the meat of the Word that tells me to love my enemies (and those who show no love to me), to pray for those who use and abuse me (Jesus did.), to bless (sincerely) those who curse me? The list seems to go on forever.
What about the spoken word of God? Am I (are you) graduating into a deeper understanding of God’s voice and greater ability to notice when He is speaking to us? Are we graduating in the desire and knowledge of hearing God’s voice and obeying it? When I was a young Christian, I varied between thinking everything was God’s voice talking to me, and nothing was God’s voice (surely that must just be my own dreams, desires, and inner voice). Granted, hearing and obeying God’s voice takes practice… so let’s go ahead and practice so we can get better at it. (I Samuel 3).That is called graduation.
There are so many areas of life that we Christians should be graduating in. God wants us to grow up! It is not an easy road, but neither was the academic rigor that the high school and college graduates now celebrating went through. Thinking back on the all-nighters spent on term papers and cramming for exams, have we ever spent all-nighters in prayer, or spiritually cramming for an upcoming “test”? Many times our tests come in the form of “pop-quizzes”, you know, those spur of the moment barbs and arrows that fly at us when we least expect it. If we have been steadily graduating in our maturity in Christ, we are more able to draw on Christ’s strength within us, and pass with flying colors.
The point in it all is to never be satisfied with where we are in our spiritual maturity, to always and continually be moving on and up toward the goal of our high calling in Christ. It is time we Christians grow up and get a life. A life of maturity and abundance that Jesus came to give us-- that He died to give us. We need to be graduating daily. God’s graduation stage is long, and part of the graduation is the walk in getting to the hand of the One who will congratulate you. If we don’t give up or grow weary in the walk we will reach the Hand of the Divine Creator who has been leading us, and we will move our tassel to the other side of the mortar board of eternity.
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