STUDENT! Five Thoughts On How To Use This Summer

 

STUDENT:  SOME THOUGHTS ON HOW TO USE THIS 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.

Read More

How To Suffer Well

 

How To Suffer Well

Geoffrey R. Kirkland

Christ Fellowship Bible Church 

“Suffer hardship with me as a good soldier of Christ Jesus” (2 Tim 3:3). The Lord Jesus alerts His followers that they all will suffer (2 Tim 3:12) for the world hates Christ and so the world will hate Christ’s own (John 15:18-20). So how, then, must we suffer well? What should we as believers mark upon our minds and set upon our souls so that we would triumph and persevere through suffering?

1. Know your lot
Remember who you are. You belong to Christ: the Prince of Peace who came unto His own but His own did not receive Him (John 1:11). Remember that if your Master has suffered so you too will suffer (John 15:20). Indeed, Christ has set the example for believers to follow in His steps (1 Pet 2:21). What is the lot of believers? What is the God-given, divinely-distributed portion for the people of God? It is to remember that Paul said: we have been destined for afflictions (1 Thess 3:5) and to not be afraid of what believers are about to suffer (Rev 3:10). The lot in the Christian’s life is suffering which produces an eternal weight of glory. If Christ, our Captain, suffered, then we as His soldiers can expect nothing less. If Christ, our Forerunner, has suffered, then let us embrace the same calling.

2. Follow your Master
Christ Himself endured the cross, despising its shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God (Heb 12:2). He followed the Father in all things (Luke 2:49). Jesus relentlessly gave Himself to the Father’s will (John 4:34). The examples of endurance that God provides comes in Hebrews 11 as the author lays forth all those who lived by faith and gained approval through their faith. They all looked to the Lord Himself by faith (Heb 11:6). The Lord Jesus knew what it was to suffer for He Himself died and has come to life (Rev 2:8). He reassures the church in Smyrna that in their suffering, He walks with them and knows all about their tribulation and their poverty (Rev 2:9). Christ calls His people to follow Him through the course of suffering. He Himself suffered and has paved the way for all of His followers to trail behind Him with persevering resilience. Just as Christ did, all believers are called to be faithful till death and Christ Himself will give the crown of life (Rev 2:10). Christ suffered and then He received glory. So it is with every believer. No greater blessing could be given to a child of God than to follow Christ and suffer for Him!

3. Consider life's brevity
When the waves of life’s sufferings come crashing down on a believer’s head it can be difficult to see the sun through the thunderclouds above. Yet it is there. After the storm comes the rays of sunlight that beam through the blue skies. So it is with every follower of Christ who suffers. The thunderclouds of suffering — however many there may be, and however severe they may be, and however long they may remain — shall one day pass. This life of suffering and pain shall not endure forevermore. Indeed, those who endure and overcome in Christ will not be hurt by the second death (Rev 2:11). The bonds and afflictions of life are afflictions, to be sure, and yet they are pictured as being momentary, light afflictions (2 Cor 4:17). They are momentary. Yet Paul spent nights and days in the deep, with shipwrecks, without food, without clothing, running for his life, in dangers on the sea and on dry land. And still, Paul describes the life of suffering as momentary. Why? Because life is brief. We are here today and gone tomorrow. We are but for a brief moment. When a Christian suffers, let him affix his heart to the future certainty that, when this brief life passes, God will assuredly wipe every tear from his eyes (Rev 7:17). Life is short. Heaven’s glory soon comes!

4. Proclaim Christ courageously
How did the Apostle Paul conduct himself when he found himself imprisoned for the cause of Christ in a cold cell in Rome (Phil 1:13)? He assured the believers that his imprisonment has served to make the cause of Christ known throughout the whole praetorian guard and to everyone else (Phil 1:13). No one could shut Paul up! He proclaims Christ even in the suffering and endured confidently whatever Christ brought His way as a divinely-graced and providentially-bestowed opportunity for gospel proclamation. The gospel spreads through proclamation. It must be spoken. It must be declared. It must be announced. This was, in fact, Paul’s ambition. With all boldness, he said, he wanted Christ as always to be exalted in his body -- whether by life or by death (Phil 1:20). When the Romans did put Paul in jail (in his first Roman imprisonment) he was gave himself to “explaining to them by solemnly testifying about the kingdom of God and trying to persuade them concerning Jesus … from morning until evening” (Acts 28:23). Indeed, Acts concludes by stating that Paul spent two full years in his own quarters preaching the kingdom of God and teaching concerning the Lord Jesus Christ with all openness, unhindered (Acts 28:30-31). Let every suffering saint take this to heart. View the times of trouble as gifts from God’s benevolent hand for you to capitalize on the opportunities to proclaim a most satisfying Christ that far surpasses the pleasures, comforts, and hopes of this world.

5. Look to heaven’s glory
A day will soon dawn when every child of God will see his God in his flesh and shall behold with his own eyes (Job 19:26-27). O how the believer can shout with joy: “my heart faints within me” (Job 19:27)! The outer man decays and let it decay day by day. But the inner man, by God’s grace, is being renewed day by day for the glory of God (2 Cor 4:16). All of this momentary, light affliction is producing for believers an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison (2 Cor 4:17). This means that every believer who feels though he is drowning in the dregs of despair or in the iron-cell of abandonment must anchor his heart, his eyes, his mind, and his will to the divinely promised word that an eternal weight of glory is soon-coming. It’s an eternal weight of glory. It’s a glory that cannot be surpassed! It cannot be exchanged! It cannot be trumped. This weight of glory that God gives to His triumphant saints is eternal and unfading. Believers must allow sufferings to wean their hearts off of this world and plant them deeply in the next. Elsewhere Paul affirmed that all the sufferings of this present age are not even worthy to be compared with the glory that is sure to be revealed to us (Rom 8:18). Yes believers groan and long for that full redemption but, until that day, let suffering believers look to heaven’s sure and sweet and satisfying and splendid glory. It is sure to come! Look for it! Hope for it! Anchor your heart there! And when the paws of the trials of this age seize, look to heaven’s glory!

>> More articles can be found at Pastor Geoff's website here.

Read More