Why God Loves Grad Students

Hello, it is good to see you all. Today I am going to launch our first-ever grad chapel with a discussion about why God loves graduate students. The text for today is Genesis 1:26-28 We’ll cover three main topics today and they are 1) the reason you are in graduate studies 2) the season of life you are currently in and finally, the lifetime you are setting up.

Genesis 1:26–28 ESV

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

The Prophet Isaiah reminds us in Isaiah 40:8 “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.”

The reason you are in graduate school

Why did you start down the path of schooling? At this point you’ve been in school for over 17 years of your life so why would you continue to pursue more education? Were 17 years of being trained to be a contributing member of society, not enough, or is there more for you to continue on? There are a lot of reasons why you might still be here at school. There are good and bad reasons. For example, if you are here because you want to make a lot of money you have chosen the wrong path. For starters, you are going to be in crippling debt for the next few years of your life after you graduate and you will have to work for a long time to pay it off, but if money and all that it can afford you in life are what is driving you, you are going down the wrong path in life.

Since most in this room are Gen z or Millennials, I suspect all of you aren’t in this for the money though I am more inclined to think you are in this because you want to make an impact on the world, place your stamp on this place and leave it better than you found it. You have seen what the drive for more and better and bigger cars and houses and stuff did to your parents and you want no part in that so you have different motivations for being here. You are hoping to be a part of something meaningful but I am sorry to tell you, this goal is just as misguided as pursuing as much money as you can. What you are hoping for is to bring about what the Bible calls the Kingdom of God, a place where justice and peace and beauty reign and there is no tear or morning or crying or pain any longer but this world is something we can only experience in shadow right now. That kingdom is one that is to come. Your hope to make an impact in the world is going to be thwarted again and again by three things humans have been fighting since the fall of humanity. The world, the flesh, and the devil. If you are here because you want to make a change and you get to the end of your life and no change has come about, was your life a waste?

I am going to say no because I actually believe God loves graduate students because God desire’s to be known by you. That is the absolute best reason to be here doing what you are doing, to know and love God. God has rooted work in creation as a good gift to be enjoyed. One of the basic understandings of research is that there will be predictable patterns in the world that we can learn wisdom from and apply to future circumstances to achieve greater outcomes. Work is something that humanity was called to do before the fall, not after. You may get the impression that I think your work is meaningless and that you should focus on other more spiritual things like evangelism, bible reading, and prayer but this is not so. Your studies are not superfluous work that you are doing when the real work that you need to be doing is spiritual. No, you are doing spiritual work because you are spiritual beings. You are a human being made in what we see in verse 27 as someone in the image of God. You are the only creature in the entire universe that is both physical and spiritual. All of you work matters, what I am discussing here is the motivation for your work.

So how do you live into that reason this season?

The Season of Life

This season of your life is one of immense importance for your overall spiritual health. You are called to pursue God with all of your heart-mind-soul-strength in this season of life as your pour yourself into your studies. The best way you can live into this season of life is by pursuing four things: 1) Embrace the rhythms and season of life 2) Recognize vulnerability 3) cultivate gratitude 4)Rest: honor sleep and sabbath.

Embrace the rhythms and seasons of life

You are by definition a limited being. You cannot do everything that is being asked of you and this season of Grad life is one in which you are going to have the make intentional decisions to pick one of the few important things in your life and say no to a lot of good things to flourish in your studies. God has made you need food, sleep, friends, exercise, academic stimulation, fun, and many things. Being in your graduate program is going to force you to pick 2 or 3 areas of your life and invent heavily into those and say no to everything else in this season of your life. As Kelly Kapic put it “When my expectations ignore my limitations, I am sinning, for I am trying to act as a god rather than as a human, infinite rather than finite. harmonizing our expectations with the seasons and rhythms of life is fundamental to a faithful life.

Recognize vulnerability

The next way God has designed for you to flourish in this season is to be vulnerable. You can’t do it all and confessing your vulnerability only affirms that you are a creature, not the creator. This community is being formed right now to become an intentional group for you as graduate students to bear one another's burdens, fail in front of, and extend grace towards. You are probably overwhelmed by the amount of work that is being asked of you, and then you have to grade undergraduates' work who have no clue what they are talking about. You are staying up until late hours of the night grinding and if you do not show up authentically to your peers, you will be crushed by the weight of expectations you are placing on yourself.

Cultivate gratitude

You are at one of the most prestigious universities studying with people from literally every corner of the world. You have been given access to education and training that 99% of the entire population of the entire human race will never receive. You are the cultural elite, even though it may not feel like it. A healthy dose of gratitude is essential to living and good and God-honoring life. God loves you and gave you this purpose in life for a reason, you are going to help humanity know God better in ways never before dreamed. In your studies you are getting to explore the mind and creation of God and how or ordered the world, logic, human cultures, societies, and everything.

Rest: honor sleep and sabbath

Finally and most practically, rest. Sleep 8 hours a night. Take one day off in 7. God has ordered the world that if you give up one-tenth of your money and 14% of your time you are actually going to live a better life. You are not a machine that can go 24/7 to be worked on for repairs. You are a human person with limitations and God has ordered the world that you need a sabbath to rest in order to actually work more productively for the rest of the week.

Your vocation for a lifetime

You are preparing for your vocational calling, the call of God into a particular kind of work or situation in life as an opportunity to express Christian obedience to the glory of God. Your vocation may end us being a full-time stay-at-home parent bringing all of your talents and abilities to bringing up the future generation, it may go into the public or private workforce, subduing the earth and having dominion over it, or you may go into education later in life. There are endless ways that you can pursue your vocation in life and that is because your vocation is not the same thing as your job. The job you get out of college or the job your end up in is not going to be the sum total of your life.

So the big question you need to be answering is how you are going to glorify God. I said earlier that the reason for being here is to know God but how are you going to do that for the rest of your lives? Studies today are showing that the average person in America will likely have 12 jobs in their lifetime. That is 12 different ways you can glorify God and pursue knowledge of Him. As you live in all of those different roles, know that as long as you are pursuing God’s glory, you are doing exactly the right thing.

At the end of creation, when the new heavens and the new earth will come down on earth as it is in heaven, the name that will be above every other name is not yours, it is Christ’s He is the one who has power and glory and dominion over all of creation and the one who will actually make an impact. Recognize your place as a sub-creator in this world, not the creator of everything.

All of this is why God loves Graduate students.