College Student: 5 Thoughts On How To Use Your Summer

STUDENT:  HOW TO USE YOUR SUMMER 

Geoffrey R. Kirkland

Pastor, Christ Fellowship Bible Church 

Sermons  |  Podcasts  |  Articles

 

Student: here is some pastoral counsel from me to you. Let these *articles of advice* get you thinking about how you can spend your summer so you don’t waste it, but use it well for God’s glory. 

5 articles of advice:

1. Rest But Stay Diligent 

Whether you stay around your campus for summer work or if you travel home (or somewhere else), make it your aim to rest and enjoy summertime while at the same time diligently doing what God has called you to do — work!  Aim to do all that you do for God’s glory, while at home, with friends, on the job, or traveling. So then: work, sleep, enjoy the summer but don’t fall into laziness. Have fun and engage with friends but don’t sit in front of the TV all day. Don’t binge watch movies all day. Don’t waste the precious gift of time God has given you. Be diligent. Have a plan. Be thoughtful. Have a schedule. Plan and prepare and implement. The key is to not be passive, a time-waster, and idle. 

2. Read, Memorize and Learn.

Make it your daily resolve to wake up and start your day reading God’s Word and in prayer. Don’t sleep the day away and neglect God’s Word. In fact, make it your aim to memorize a favorite psalm (e.g., Psalm 32, 63, 95, 103, 145) or another portion of Scripture (e.g., Ephesians 2; Philippians 3; James 1, etc). Further: pick a good book and read it carefully, thoughtfully and engagingly during the summer to sharpen your theological understanding. You might want to read Kevin DeYoung: “Just Do Something” or Mark Dever: “9 Marks of a Healthy Church” or Paul Tripp: “Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands” or Paul Washer: “The Gospel’s Power and Message”. 

3. Re-gather, Serve & Linger Long with Saints. 

This Sunday, like this week, make it your goal to attend worship with the saints. In fact, I encourage you to not go only to the late service (and please don’t show up late to that!), but get there early, ask how you can serve, hand out bulletins, greet folks, help set up chairs, do sound, sit close and take notes!  And, I challenge you, make it your aim to find a godly, older couple in your local church and spend time with them. Ask if you can treat them to a cup of coffee (after church or another time that’s most convenient). Or ask if you can come to their home and bring a meal to get to know them. Attend. Serve. Give. Employ your gifts. Learn from and linger with saints who have walked the journey and who are still walking closely with Jesus.

4. Fight for Purity. Slay the Beginnings of Temptation. Enjoy Christ.

Kill sexual sin! You will be tempted. Count on it. Get a battle plan. Have a fighter verse (Psalm 119:9, 105; Job 31:1; 1 Thessalonians 4:3-8; Psalm 16:11) to help you so you can run there in a moment of temptation (on the screen, in person, at the gym, or wherever). Remember that sin is always full of lies and sin is always bad. Always. Sin makes promises but never delivers. Sin, like a rose, may look and smell enticing but you grab it with your hands and the thorns prick you. If you need guidance in this, read Proverbs 5-7 often (even daily!) and remember that Christ is infinitely greater, better, purer, sweeter, and more satisfying than any promise immorality could ever make! Choke sexual sin. Starve it. Don’t feed it. Run to Scripture, to Christ, to Truth, to the Gospel!

5. Engage in Some Evangelistic Outing With Other Believers. 

I bet someone from your church would love to join you for an evangelism outing this summer.  Grab some New Testaments, or some gospel tracts, and your Bible and go to a busy plaza where people gather. Or, go out on the 4th of July to a downtown gathering where lots of people will congregate. Go to a local Memorial Day parade. Offer people gospel tracts. Do so with a smile. Ask people if they have the assurance of eternal life when they die — and be ready and prepared to engage them in gospel conversation and proclaim God’s gospel to them. Watch and see how going out and “fishing for souls” will enliven and invigorate your heart and the hearts of other believers who go out with you. If you’re not sure where to go, or who to do it with, reach out to your pastor and he would love to help you. 

Eccl. 12:1, 13-14 —  Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near when you will say, “I have no delight in them” ...  The conclusion, when all has been heard, is: fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person. For God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil.

The Pastor's *Primary* Responsibilities

 

The Pastor’s Primary Responsibilities
Geoffrey R. Kirkland
Christ Fellowship Bible Church

In this brief essay, I will set before you three primary responsibilities of every pastor.

Intercede for God’s Flock
Pray
To neglect to pray is to neglect the power source in a pastor’s ministry. For a minister to engage in many duties in his church and yet omit the regular practice of prayer demonstrates that he has no understanding of nor does he have any conviction of the importance of the ministry, his helplessless in the ministry, his humility in the ministry and God’s sovereignty over his ministry. A pastor must pray. A shepherd must intercede for God’s flock. Every Christian is a sheep that belongs to God and God has stated that every sheep in the fold belongs to Him. And God has entrusted His own blood-bought sheep to the care of His undershepherds — pastors. To lead is to model. And there is no greater way that a pastor can model Christlikeness for his flock than to show them how to pray; that is, to model a life of prayer for them. It is insufficient for a pastor to say his ‘prayers’. The common statistic that the average pastor prays less than 10 minutes a day cannot describe a man who is radically in love with Christ, desperately in need of His power, and singularly awed by the gospel of sovereign grace. No one must coerce the pastor to pray. No one must check in to certify that the minister is on his knees. The godly minister has callouses on his knees that no one ever sees. He spends time with his God alone in the early morning when many people lay still on their beds. The minister has an overwhelming amount of items for which he can pray. He certainly longs to worship God in prayer: to adore Him, to bless Him, to ascribe glory and power to Him. The minister confesses his own sin to God. He repents of his sin to God. He begs for God to examine him and show him in the inner recesses of his heart and mind and motivations so that he will be spotless, blameless, and above reproach. The shepherd must pray for his flock by name. He must know them. He must bring them before the throne of God. Jesus prayed for His flock, so should every godly minister. The exemplary leader must take hold of God in prayer, giving him no rest, until God blesses the ministry, the preaching, the shepherding, the counseling, the discipling, the evangelizing, and the fellowship. Indeed, a teaching pastor must pray throughout the week and wrestle with God in prayer to come with power upon the preached Word. He must pray for the anointing of the Spirit. He must pray for the unction of the Spirit. He must seek the face of God throughout his days of studying, discipling, mentoring, resting. The godly pastor communes with God regularly. He prays urgently, passionately, warmly, daily, and believingly. Christ modeled a prayer life, so should pastors.


Feed God’s Flock
Preach
The Lord Jesus told Peter no less than three times to shepherd and tend His flock. A primary responsibility of a shepherd is to feed the sheep. If he has everything in the world and yet he fails to feed the sheep, eventually they will starve and die. The pastor is called to tend God’s flock. The sheep do not belong to the pastor; they’re God’s. And God demands that the man of God ‘preach the Word’ in season and out of season. Even when masses turn away to what their itching ears desire and turn aside from the truth, the man of God must be faithful to fulfill his calling and teach with all authority. To feed is to provide sustenance. A shepherd can feed the sheep poisonous food but the sheep will most certainly die. The shepherd can feed the flock food lacking nutrition and the sheep will be malnourished, unhealthy and they soon will become sick and eventually they will die. So it is with a pastor. A pastor is to teach and preach. He must feed God’s flock. He must feed them the Word of God, the full counsel of God, biblical theology, and the unashamed, unflinching, unrestrained truth of Scripture. He must preach the Bible. This is what expository preaching means. The man of God expounds the meaning of the Word of God so that the people of God understand what God says in God’s Word and how their lives must be affected because of it. The pastor must study to show himself approved so he feeds the flock of God with the food of God as it rightly comes out of the Word of God so they can live lives to the glory of God.


Tend God’s Flock
Pastor
The man of God must care for souls. To pastor is to conduct soul-care. To care rightly for God’s people, one must tend the flock with regularity and with compassion. The pastor is just called to do that, pastor the flock. Shepherds live with the flock, they care for the flock, they nurture the flock, they love the flock, they live with the flock, they ward off predators who could harm the flock, they know the flock by name and see them frequently. The pastor should live similarly among God’s people. He should live and conduct himself among and with the flock. He must know the flock. He must enter their homes to visit the flock. He must avail himself to the flock for counseling, for wisdom, for prayer, and for guidance. To feed is essential, but it’s not enough. Shepherds can feed the sheep, but good shepherds care for, protect, instruct in the way they should go, warn in the way they must avoid, and see how they walk. Shepherds must attend to those who are bruised and wounded. They must give must attention to the cast-down and the broken-hearted. Pastors cannot conduct this kind of soul-care only by preaching on Sunday with the flock. He must know them throughout the week. He must open the Word with the people with regularity. He must enter their homes and counsel them in the Word and he must open up his own home so as to model hospitality, godly living in the home, and family worship. This cuts to the core of the contemporary celebrity, traveling preacher who more often than not is away from the home, away from his flock, unable to meet with his people and thus unable to personally point them to Christ. May God’s pastors shepherd the flock of God among them. May God’s ministers teach God’s people God’s Word publicly and from house to house. If a pastor neglects this ministry, then he no longer is qualified to be called a ‘pastor.’ He may be a teacher, and he may be an expositor, but if he is not with his people then he cannot honestly be called a pastor of souls. He is to model for the flock Christlikeness. He is to point them to incessant and specific lives of prayer and communion with God. He is to instruct them in family worship, in godly living in the home, in marital unity, in parental duties, in the mortification of sin, and in the zealous pursuit of holiness. He should strive to win souls through fervent evangelism and model for the flock a compassionate heart for the lost. May God equip such men to fulfill their duties as pastors so as to glorify God by caring for His flock and serving them with God’s strength.

Don't Dispute About Your Election. Repent & Believe!

 

From Joseph Alleine:

"Do not stand still disputing about your election, but set to repenting and believing. Cry to God for converting grace. Revealed things belong to you; in these busy yourself.... Whatever God's purposes may be, I am sure His promises are true. Whatever the decrees of heaven may be, I am sure if I repent and believe I shall be saved."