A Moment to Pause & Reflect
It’s been almost 3 months since I first arrived here in Louisville to start a long pilgrimage towards an M.Div here at Southern Seminary. Looking back at the past three months, it really feels like time has just flown by so quickly!
There has been so much to read and study for every class I am taking, even as I am only taking 11 hours of classes. I have learned more about theology (Systematic I) and the Scriptures (NT I) than I have ever learned before, and have been convicted by Dr. Don Whitney of the importance of doing the biblical personal Spiritual disciplines daily and without ceasing. Furthermore, I cannot neglect mentioning how much of a blessing it is to be learning the biblical languages. And although Greek has been very difficult in many instances (especially “participles”), I know I can do it well if I just put my entire effort into it — which I honestly do not find myself doing so just yet.
Thus, with all that has happened academically, spiritually and personally, I find it necessary to take a moment to pause and reflect on how the semester has gone so far. To all my seminarian friends who are reading this, I exhort you to do the same. Let us take a moment — may it be just 15 or 30 minutes — to pause whatever we are doing and just reflect and examine ourselves for what we have done in these short three months. We are in the “home stretch” of the semester with three weeks of classes to go and only four weeks until final exams. That means there are only five weeks left in the semester, and the way things have gone and are going so far, I know I desperately need a moment to catch a breath, and discern what areas I have done well on, what areas I need improvement on, and what areas I need to completely repent and change from — academically, spiritually, personally.
The Holy Spirit reminds us in Ecclesiastes chapter 3 that for everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven. Henceforth, if we truly believe that we are living in the Kingdom of Heaven and under the sovereign reign and rulership of our Lord, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, let us consider now the things we need to plant and the things we need to pluck up; what things we need to break down and what things we need to build up; which things we need to keep and those must be cast away. I could go on, but the truth of the matter is, it is basically impossible to go forward effectively without looking back to evaluate where we have been and how we have done what we have done.
In our devotional and quiet times, may it be that it’s slipped into a robotic or God forbid, a legalistic endeavor; maybe even our academic studies of God’s inerrant Word and its life-transforming doctrines have become something we know about instead of knowing the God of whom it is all about. If this even remotely is true of your journey so far, I encourage you join me in pausing and reflecting upon where we have been, and whether or not we truly should be continuing on that path. After all that has been said and done, I want nothing more than to know that I was in on the will of God and not be left doing something else than what God required of me.
In considering what ‘I’ have done, I am reminded what the Spirit said through Paul in Romans 7:18, one of my friend’s favorite verses: “For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.” All along this road towards the Beautiful One, it was not I who lives and does all this stuff, but it is rather Christ who lives and works in me. Through the Helper whom Jesus gave to us before He left for Heaven, we can do all things through Him who strengthens us.
And for this very reason, I look to the Cross of Christ. As I reflect in His Word, in journaling and in prayer, I humbly and honestly look at the works of my hands, and I see how sin-stained they are. Yet somehow, in the midst of the self-evaluation, I am not only convicted of my sin, but moreover, I am convinced of His grace! His grace which abounds so much more than any of our sins of omission or commission. And this very grace that has saved me also compels me and empowers me, to stop trying and to start dying to do this life by my own strength, the grace that disciplines me to give it all to Him.
The Lord sits enthroned over the flood;
the Lord sits enthroned as king forever.
May the Lord give strength to his people!
May the Lord bless his people with peace!
