I remember getting ready to graduate from high school. It was a crazy time. It was a hectic time. I was scared. I was nervous. I was excited. And if I had only known what God had in store for me, I would have been even more scared, nervous and excited than I already was!
On Wednesday evenings we have been discussing what it means to live a life transformed. Romans 12:1-2 says:
Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.
College is a place to be different. A place to start over or a place to re-establish. It is a place to try new things and gain new hobbies and interests. It is a place to meet new people who will help you to grow into the person you have always wanted to be, or the person you never wanted to be. My caution and my encouragement to you is this: don’t become so well-adjusted to the culture around you that you fit into it without even thinking. Regardless of what culture that may be.
God gave you a brain, and it is an incredible muscle, and the great thing about muscles is that they can either get bigger and stronger or they can get weak and atrophy. So regardless of what group of friends you find, never just assume they are making all the right decisions. Paul says that we need to test and approve God’s perfect will. We need to dig deep and see what God has in store for us. And I can tell you from personal experience that what God has in store is always, always, always more rewarding and amazing than anything we could’ve planned for ourselves.
Remember that you are called to be a living sacrifice for God. You are called to be an ambassador for His cause. And He has an incredible plan for you as you move forward into this next phase of your life. And remember, that He loves you and wants to be a part of your ordinary everyday life…your sleeping, eating, walking around, going to work life. And if you do, you will be changed from the inside out.
