A Road With Many Curves

         It is true what they say about teenagers and college freshman, "They don't know what they don't know."  I just graduated from California Baptist University (CBU) last week and recognize that during the past four years I have learned much, but also learned that I don't know much.  This is just the beginning.  Both the acquisition of knowledge and the recognition of my ignorance come from the Lord and the godly scholars at CBU.  But really it is I who is wiser to my need, and it extends far beyond book knowledge.

         I am relieved that I graduated.  I say relieved because the last two years were harder for me than the first two.  I did not graduate because I was smart and definitely not because I had a good work ethic or was disciplined.  I graduated because I have a praying, gracious, and patient wife, and because I had a praying, gracious, and caring group of professors.  But before all of that, I graduated because God's grace and his calling are fixed in the heavens and active in the lives of needy Christ followers.  Each time I get ahead of myself, God's timely and loving discipline reminds me of his holiness, his grace, and my inability.  Without him I really would be in hell--living and eternal.  God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble and I have suffered much opposition these past few years because of my pride.
         I have seen the feast that God offers and I have seen the feast that sin offers.  I pray that my eyes will continually be illumined by God's Spirit so that the deceitfulness of sin and the call to its feast will be easily recognized and thwarted; that the glory of Christ will be increasingly seen in my life and that my heart may have an increasing desire to feast with the bridegroom in daily prayer and in constant, life-changing trust in his word--all in hope of the coming wedding feast where we will see his face.  I hope that the knowledge of my need will drive me closer to the cross for I know that there are many more curves ahead.  I pray for grace in those times; and grace for my brothers and sisters as well.