Number
80
A Few Thoughts as You Head Off for College
by Patrick Morley
Children…. Though you
are hardly children anymore, except in the technical sense. In every other
way you are now adults, and you have made me very happy and proud. As
you leave home I want to offer you with a few thoughts about practical
and spiritual things.
PRACTICAL THINGS
CONTENTMENT: The great secret
of contentment will not be getting what you want, but wanting what you
get.
CHANGING YOUR LIFE: If you
do what you've always done, you will be what you've always been.
DISCIPLINE: Do what you don't
want to do and you will become what you want to be. Sometimes we need
to substitute discipline for a lack of natural interest.
DISAPPOINTMENT: All disappointment
is the result of unmet expectations. This will mean more as time goes
on.
EFFECTIVENESS: Do fewer things
better.
DECISION MAKING: The best insurance
for making the right decision is to know how to not make the wrong decision.
Never do anything you don't understand. Never do anything without consulting
the Lord in prayer. Never do anything until you have peace-peace is the
umpire.
HAPPINESS: Happiness does not
mean a life free of difficulty, but an abundance of joy because hope burns
in our hearts through Jesus. We have hope because we know who is in charge,
we believe He knows what we're going through, we believe He will always
take care of us, and we know how it will end.
HARD TIMES: Do not ask God
to shorten the duration of your hard times. Rather, ask God to help you
learn every lesson He has for you during the hard times, lest you have
to travel that way again.
IDENTITY: What you do is often
the true reflection of who you are.
INTEGRITY: Integrity is a one-to-one
correlation between my Bible, my belief, and my behavior.
LOVE: People will decide whether
Christianity is true by whether we love one another. The height of our
love for God will never exceed the depth of our love for one another.
Love is the glue that holds us together, and the oil that keeps us from
rubbing each other the wrong way.
MARRIAGE: If you want a nominal
marriage, marry a nominal Christian.
MEANING: Are people so frustrated
because life has no meaning? No, it is exactly because God has set eternity
in our hearts that we have a "built in" sense that life does
have meaning. Frustration comes when we have not yet found it. The simple
fact that humans desire to believe in something shows there must be something
to believe in (otherwise, why would we have the desire to believe?).
PATIENCE: The price of pace
is peace. There are very few things in life that can't wait two weeks.
PLANNING: Some say, "I'm
too busy to take time to plan." If you're too busy, it's because
you didn't take time to plan. Unless, of course, your plan was to be too
busy, because we all do exactly what we plan to do.
PRIORITIES: Distinguish opportunity
from distraction.
QUIET TIME: One benefit of
daily devotions is that you get the sense life is an ongoing spiritual
pilgrimage, not something that you accomplish once for all. The impatience
of wanting to "arrive" is turned into a holy patience when we
come daily to the table in search of a piece of bread.
REFLECTION: I think we pass
too quickly from one activity to the next without setting aside time for
meaningful reflection. As a result we do not find the layered and deeper
meanings and insights, the interconnections of our experiences.
TIME MANAGEMENT: The greatest
time-waster is the time we spend undoing that which ought not have been
done in the first place. Lord, help us to say no where we should say no
so we can say yes where we would should say yes.
WORLDLINESS: God doesn't want
to take you out of the world; He wants to take the world out of you.
SPIRITUAL THINGS
BIBLE: Christians do not use
their experience to interpret the word of God; they use the word of God
to interpret their experience.
DECEITFULNESS OF SIN: The flesh
is deceitful, wicked, and weak. But it is most deceitful, most wicked,
and most weak when it is disguised as piety. The only thing worse than
flesh is pious flesh.
DISCIPLE: A disciple is one
called to walk with Jesus, equipped to live like Jesus, and sent to work
for Jesus.
THE FALL: The Fall explains
why we must look at the blazing beauty of a sunrise through thick glasses
that grace the bridge of a runny nose. An offense to reason, says Pascal,
once accepted it makes perfect sense of the human condition.
GOD'S WILL: If it is God's
will for you to get a thing, there is nothing that you can do to not get
it. If it is God's will for you to not get a thing, no amount of begging
will make it happen.
GRACE: We give God our sin;
He gives us His grace. Our sin for His Son. Sin for Son. Because of sin
you can never be good enough for God to love; because of grace you can
never be bad enough for God not to love you.
JESUS: Could it be that the
most astounding fact of history is that God reduced himself to human flesh
that we might comprehend him? When you are adrift in a sea of futility,
sometimes calmed to boredom, sometimes raging high, it is pleasant to
remember there is Savior who will walk across the water to meet you in
the middle of a storm.
JOY: Because of the shed blood
of Jesus Christ, the joy we have is not lighthearted; our happiness is
not casual. Our peace was costly, not free.
JUSTICE: Is God just? No. Is
there any among us who at the end of any given day would actually want
what we really deserved? God does not give us justice, but mercy. He is
patient, not wanting any to perish but all to come to repentance.
MERCY: Justice would be to
get what you deserve. Mercy is not getting what you deserve.
PRAYER: Praying once a day
is like eating one potato chip. Prayer is the currency of our personal
relationship with Jesus.
SACRIFICE: If He can die for
me, I can live for him.
SERVANT: A servant is someone
who goes where Jesus would go to do what Jesus would do. If you want to
be a servant you must be willing to be treated like one.
SURRENDER: The irony of surrender
is that it ends not in defeat but victory.
WISDOM: Wisdom is the faculty
that considers all that is said and left unsaid, then, after prayer, makes
the best choice possible under the circumstances.
WITNESSING: The best method
of evangelism is the one you will use. Ask God to give you an unreasonable
burden for one person. The number one reason people come to faith is the
credible witness of a trusted friend.
I love you very much and am
so proud of you!
May you always walk and rest
in the peace of Christ,
Dad
Business
leader, author, and speaker, Patrick Morley helps men to think more deeply
about their lives, to be reconciled with Christ, and to be equipped for
a larger impact on the world.
©2000.
Patrick M. Morley. All rights reserved. This may be reproduced with proper
attribution for non-commercial purposes.
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