Graduation Thoughts

This past weekend I graduated from Denver Seminary with a Masters of Divinity with an emphasis in Youth and Family Ministries. It was the end of a ten year loooong journey. I started seminary right after college in 2000 at Southeastern Baptist in Wake Forest, NC, then transferred to Gordon-Conwell in Charlotte, then transferred to Fuller in Colorado Springs, and spent the last three years finishing at Denver Seminary.

Despite all the $$$, time, and hard work that it cost me, I am so thankful to have learned all I have learned, but the most valuable thing I'm taking with me is a greater sense of self-awareness. Yesterday a friend told me that he was reading John 3-4 and realized something for the first time. As Jesus talks to Nicodemus and the woman at the well, it seems that the more they understand who they truly are, the more Jesus reveals His true self to them. This has been so true in my own life as well. As I understand more of who I am apart from God's grace, I understand more of how holy and worthy God is of our worship and very lives. The more knowledge I learn, the more I realize how very little I know, and how all knowledge is rubbish compared to knowing Christ himself.

Paul says it best in PHILIPPIANS 3:7-11 (The Message Translation)
"The very credentials these people are waving around as something special, I'm tearing up and throwing out with the trash—along with everything else I used to take credit for. And why? Because of Christ. Yes, all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant—dog dung. I've dumped it all in the trash so that I could embrace Christ and be embraced by him. I didn't want some petty, inferior brand of righteousness that comes from keeping a list of rules when I could get the robust kind that comes from trusting Christ—God's righteousness.I gave up all that inferior stuff so I could know Christ personally, experience his resurrection power, be a partner in his suffering, and go all the way with him to death itself. If there was any way to get in on the resurrection from the dead, I wanted to do it."

Crazy to think of that hard earned diploma as "insignificant dog-dung" but I hope I'll continue to fall so deeply in love with Jesus that I would be willing to throw every honor and credential out the window, just to know Him more. The journey continues...