Skip to main content

Thankful for Seminary


I just finished my four year seminary career and man was it amazing. I have learned so much these past four years about the grace that God has given in sending His one and only Son. If someone were to ask me what the number one thing I learned in seminary is, I would have to say that I learned more about God's love for sinners in Christ than anything else. Before going to seminary I talked with one person who had just graduated and I asked them what they thought. They told me it should be called cemetery because this particular person's experience was not very good. I have to say that I don't understand how someone's experience could have been so negative because mine seemed so great. The professors at Southern Seminary are some of the most gifted Bible scholars in the world and yet they are very down to earth and friendly. I have had the privilege to learn the original languages of the Scripture along with courses on Church History and Systematic Theology. I have taken courses on books of the Bible from my own pastor and have been privileged to grow in my knowledge of Scripture.


 Seminary has taught me a lot, but so has marriage. Emily and I got married on June 6, 2009 and had our daughter Annie Ruth October 16, 2011 (my birthday). I have learned through marriage what it means to be a good husband who leads the family well and provides for them. I have learned the importance of not being overly busy and having quality family time. I have also learned that I am a huge sinner. Before marriage, its fairly easy to think of oneself as pretty holy, but marriage helps to bring out your true nature and allow God to really get to working on your sanctification. I am so grateful now to have a little sinner to lead in raising unto the Lord so that I can best explain this big and wonderful God I've come to know.


 Now that my seminary career is over I am sending out resumes all over the country and am passionate about serving the Lord in the local church. The local church is where God's heart is and I want to be there to serve Him. Its so great being done with seminary because now I have all the more time to devote to serving His body. I have to say that the most important thing I've learned about myself in seminary is the importance to have godly friends who will help you live for the Lord. The friends who have been there during my seminary career have truly helped me to fall more in love with Jesus when this old stubborn heart of mine wants its own ways pretty bad. I am so excited to see where God takes us next and I pray he helps me fan into flame His gift for the equipping of the saints for the work of the ministry.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Sabbath or Lord's Day?

What is the Sabbath? Why did God include keeping the Sabbath in the 10 Commandments? Does the Bible call Christians today to keep the Sabbath? Should believers do any work on the Sabbath? Is the Sabbath Saturday or Sunday? Does any of this matter? These are all questions that the Bible answers for us, although there are a variety of different practices among churchgoers. It must first be noted that the keeping of the Sabbath was commanded by God Himself to the people of Israel as they wandered through the wilderness. God wanted His people to so reflect His holy character that He called them to rest from their work as He rested from the work of creation (Ex. 20:8-11). As He often does, God had called Israel to do the opposite of what common sense states. To take a day off of work is seen by many to be contrary to good productivity, but in the Lord's economy, it shows true success. By resting on the Sabbath day, Israel was publicly declaring to God their faith in His ability t...

Leading God's People to Trust His Word

Today I read: 2 Kings 12, Psalms 62-63, Hosea 3-4, and 2 Timothy 2. Gospel summary: Every leader of God's people must lead them to trust in him alone by rightly handling and teaching his Word. Prayer: God, you are my rock of refuge and you alone are worthy of my trust. Thank you that you have given me your trustworthy Word, because I live in a world full of deceitful promises. Help me today to put all my trust in you alone and not in any man, including myself or my accomplishments. Help me as a spiritual leader to lead your people to build their lives on the solid foundation of Jesus, the Word of God. Help me to teach and preach your Word properly, refusing to feed others on the false manna of my own ideas or creativity. Grant that I may live so by faith in you that others see your trustworthiness in my personal life and learn to trust you themselves. In Jesus' solid name I pray, amen. Memory verse: "Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart be...

The Word: Fully Human, Fully Divine

The Christmas holiday brings with it questions of both the incarnation and the trustworthiness of its record. Was Jesus just a man claiming to be God or God pretending to be a man? If the Bible was written by men, can we really trust it? In this two-part post, we’ll see the fully human, fully Divine nature of both God’s Word (post 1) and Jesus, God’s Word made flesh (post 2). So this week, lets examine the reliability of the Bible, which bears the record of the God-Man, Jesus. The Word of God is fully human a) Human agents, with their own personalities and backgrounds, wrote the Bible The Scripture was written over more than a millennium-long stretch of time by several dozen authors from various cultural backgrounds. Therefore to consider that God could speak one distinct message for His people through such different people in different times and different places is surely a miracle. Students of the Bible can tell you that the message of God’s Word, whether Genesis or Revel...