A Message to Graduates
Congratulations!
Our society reserves the term “graduation” for the completion of worthy academic accomplishments. The fact that you’re a graduate means that you have finished something significant.
Well done.
Keep learning. When you stop seeking to learn, you stop growing. When you stop growing, you start dying. Your best life will be one committed to life-long learning.
As you move through life, you’ll find far more people starting meaningful endeavors than finishing them. You’ve proven you can finish. The most successful people let the momentum of one success fuel their confidence and capacity for their next. Don’t lose your momentum. Be wise in choosing the next step and hold on to the value of finishing what you start.
Speaking of your next step, there are expectations, hopes, dreams, questions, concerns, fears, assumptions, plans... Some of them may collide with others. My guess is that you may look around at your classmates wearing the same caps and gowns and consider how similar you look and how unique you feel.
Graduations often serve as milestones, where we seek to pivot from being one of many pursuing the same goal toward being an individual seeking to discover one’s own unique purpose and place in the world. You’ll most likely encounter countless opinions on how to proceed. Though few will ring true to you and even fewer will offer specific guidance on how one puts those opinions into practice.
Finding oneself in a moment, or even a season, of being overwhelmed with more questions and concerns than answers is normal. You’re human. Take a deep breath and slowly exhale.
The Bible tells us that God knew you while you were in your mother’s womb. It says that He loves you more than you will ever know. I’ve been studying the Bible for decades and my understanding is that it would be easier to hold every drop of the Ohoopee, Altamaha, and even the mighty Mississippi in a Yeti cup than it is for you to fully comprehend God’s love and grace for you. He’s known you since before you were born and he has loved you more each day since then. Nothing you’ve done will change that. You are the apple of his eye. God will never stop loving you.
In His great love for you, the Bible says that God made you unique and wonderfully complex. No one else in the history of the world has the exact same combination of gifts, talents, desires, strengths, and interests. No one else in the history of the world will be entrusted with the opportunities to match what you have been given with the needs of this world. God has a wonderfully complex plan for your life, and you have a unique calling to make your own impact in the world. You have a God-given purpose.
I’m not trying to overwhelm or burden you. To the contrary, I want to free you. I want to free you from thinking you must figure it all out. I want to free you from the guilt or frustration in thinking that you somehow missed it while others unfurl their long-term plans. I want to free you from the hollowness that comes from hiding your inability to see how it all unfolds, and/or rushing into something under the false guise of seeing the big picture. I want to free you from the pressure to run a meaningless race.
Throughout Scripture, we see God calling the heroes of the Bible just one step at a time. He rarely reveals the whole map. Instead, He tends to give us one choice at a time. Each time we make the next right decision to align with Him, and trust Him to meet us there, we’ve taken a step of faith. Each step both strengthens our faith in Him and moves us a step closer to discovering who God has created us to become. But don’t fret. Not one person in Scripture makes only right choices. Again and again, the heroes of the Bible make poor decisions, some much worse than anything you’ve done; and each time they simply turn to God to take the next right step from where they find themselves. In grace, God meets them there and leads them forward.
How do we discern the next right step?
One’s ability to discern the desires of another is always based on familiarity. The more time we spend with someone, the more we get to know them, and the more readily we learn their nature, expectations, and cues. God is no different. The more time we spend focused on God and His Word, the more readily we grasp what He would have us do next. He will never contradict what He has already given you through Scripture. But only the Scripture you know will serve you in discerning His will for you. The simplicity of faithfully trusting God’s love and guidance gives us the wisdom to navigate the complexity of our lives.
I love James 1:5 –
“If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.”
This verse is telling you that if you will humble yourself, realizing that you need God’s perspective, and simply ask for it, that God will give it to you, regardless of anything you have done.
Too often, we start trying to figure out a solution, narrow the options, then ask God to bless our decision or to choose between options. In this approach, we overlook the reality that God is never limited to our options, and we’ll miss whatever He has waiting beyond our own expectations. By becoming more familiar with God and His Word we improve our readiness to discern His guidance when He gives it.
Paul tells us in Romans 12:2,
“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
Notice Paul gives us only two options – be conformed or be transformed. There is no option to remain unchanged. We are all changing. We are always changing. The question is not will I change, but how will I change? If you are unintentional, and simply go with the flow, you will knowingly or unknowingly conform to the world.
How does that happen?
It happens through sin. From the very first sin, sin has always been about choosing to determine what is good and evil apart from God’s input. The world will tell you to choose what is good and evil for yourself, while steering you toward the predetermined values of whatever group has your ear. The irony is that while sin always deceives us by offering some form of independence, it steals one’s God-given uniqueness. The more one sins, the more you will think, speak, act, and even look like others engaged in the same sin. Sin leads to conformity among sinners.
Only God has made you unique and wonderfully complex.
Only God can guide you to discover your God-given unique and wonderfully complex identity, potential, and purpose.
That’s why Paul calls us away from conforming to the world toward being transformed by the renewing of our minds by God so that we “may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” God alone transforms us into who He made us to be.
If you want to be one of many,
if you simply wish to blend in,
if you want your acceptance to be based on behavior, temporary achievements, or ever-changing standards,
if you want to keep chasing what can never be caught,
if you want an unfulfilling life, never realizing your God-given unique potential and purpose,
just conform to the crowd, please others, and collect trophies that collect dust.
But if you want to be transformed,
if you want to discover your uniqueness,
if you want to fulfill your God-given potential,
if you want to find your purpose,
start by intentionally and consistently being with Jesus.
“Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”
John 15:4-5
Again, congratulations. I’m praying for you.