Commencement Address
By: Sean Scott
I recently gave a commencement address for a group of seniors here at Redeemer or who have been involved in our student ministries. In thinking through what I would like to leave them with in terms of “life advice” as they close the high school chapter of their lives, I found myself thinking consistently about three things:
Know the Lord
Delight in the Lord
Serve the Lord.
My “senior quote” I shared along with my picture in my high school yearbook was the famous Gandalf quote from The Lord of the Rings (J.R.R. Tolkien). The wise wizard is addressing Frodo the hobbit early on in their journey, and Frodo is particularly troubled by the weight of the situation and has just finished saying he wishes none of this had happened to him. Gandalf says in response:
“So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world besides that of evil.”
And so, even though this advice is good for high schoolers, I realized these are good questions and topic to consider for all of us. What are you going to do with the time that is given to you? Do you believe there are forces at work for your good despite what is so clearly a broken world?
I attempted to address these questions and more. And King David from Psalms is going to help me. Psalm 37 helps us understand what I think is the best thing to tell a bunch of graduates.
So again, what is the most important thing that our graduates, and you too, will do for the rest of your life?
Know the Lord
Delight in the Lord
Serve the Lord
Psalm 37 is written by King David as he reflects back on his life and is writing about how the Lord will not forsake his people, even when they often see the wicked prospering instead of themselves. So firstly, we need to:
Know the Lord
It wouldn’t make any sense, as you grew up in your home as a small child, if you just cut yourself off from talking to your parents. Imagine learning that their name was “dad” or “mom”, that magically once a week the refrigerator was full, that your bed and laundry were taken care of, and just living as though your parents weren’t there. Pulling the strings and making all of it happen. You knew enough information about them, why should you continue to talk to them? They will provide what you need, and that’s about the end of their usefulness. Right?
OF COURSE this doesn’t make any sense. Whether you wanted them to be there or not, they were around. They were present. The provided for you. They disciplined you. They counseled you.
It wouldn’t make sense for us to learn a little about them as kids and then never talk to them again, and yet we are faced with the chance to do this to God all the time. In fact, those of us involved in Redeemer or our local church heavily have even treated God this way.
Knowing the Lord, and putting time into that relationship is not only beneficial for you in your current phase of life, it is literally what you are made for. God has existed in perfect relationship to himself, and knit you in your mother’s womb, and made you in his image. This means you were MADE to be in relationship with him.
But how do we do this? Enter the words of David. Psalm 37:7 says to “Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him”
It is entirely strange to us to be still before the Lord. No matter what phase of life you are in, this likely hasn’t come natural to you. Verse 7 explains why this is hard. It goes on to say “…fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way, over the man who carries out evil devices”
Now we all have slightly different definitions of what it means to prosper, yet knowing the Lord and being still before him is what you are made for regardless. And true prosperity, namely the inheritance that awaits us in eternity, begins with a rich and deep relationship with the living God.
Knowing the Lord means being still, means hearing him speak to you, means crying out to him with thanks, and also despair, and receiving the Grace and mercy he freely offers you daily. Knowing the Lord enables you to be bold, to step out into what you think he’s calling you to do, because he’s not disappointed when you fail. Jesus says:
“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Mt. 11:28-30)
You see, knowing the Lord won’t make your life easy. It won’t give you all you want and desire on your own. He will lead you into hard and scary places. But he offers rest, and that rest comes from relationship. God the father invites you to continue to know him just like you grew in relationship to your parents as you grew up. As you showed them something you did that was amazing, or cried in their arms when you skinned your knee, God wants that intimacy with you, He made you for it, so seek it out, daily.
Another one of the most important things you will do for the rest of your life is:
Delight in the Lord
This Psalm is largely David looking back and sharing that even though it looks like the wicked have it good, they have no idea the kind of eternal trouble they’re in. For the one following God, 37:4 says “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart”
This seems to be a paradox, something that can’t possibly mean what it says if we think people are naturally sinful, but it’s as simple as this. As you know the Lord and delight in that relationship, your desires and his will more closely align.
Contentment and joy found in the father’s will happens when you go seeking after the Father, and responding to the passions he gives you. The beginning of delighting in him and finding contentment is really just realizing how much he delights in us.
Think about it this way, when parents look upon their newborn in the hospital, and get that wave of delight, of indescribable emotion, the Father looks upon us with infinitely more love than that.
But that begs the question, how do we seek after true contentment, true delight in the Lord?
Proverbs 30 can help us here.
“Remove far from me falsehood and lying. Give me neither poverty nor riches, feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’ or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God.” (Prov. 30:7-8)
The secret to contentment, in other words, is found in seeking God’s face, not our hands. It trusts the planner, not the plans.
The world – especially right now – needs more people who know their God and delight in him.
And so finally, the best advice I can think to give to graduates, as well as you and I, concludes with a command:
Serve the Lord
When we are deeply entrenched in a relationship with the Lord, and delight in Him, we are more equipped to serve, and serving becomes easier.
Psalm 37:16 puts it beautifully:
“Better is the little that the righteous has than the abundance of many wicked.”
Whether we are able to make sizeable financial gifts, host gatherings or groups, prepare meals, work with children, greet on Sunday mornings, or just clean the bathrooms, we are called to serve in some way. We are to be ambassadors of the Gospel and to be the hands and feet of Jesus. When we serve in big, noticeable ways, or small and seemingly insignificant ways, God is the one at work.
A robust life of service naturally flows out of Knowing Him. It doesn’t feel like “service” because you’d do anything for a friend who behaves like God does towards us. It doesn’t matter if we have little to offer, because of verse 16’s reminder that the little we do have is far better than the abundance of the one who does not know God.
David continues:
“The steps of a man are established by the Lord, when he delights in his way; though he fall he shall not be cast headlong, for the Lord upholds his hand.”
We will feel free to serve as we delight in Him and as we know Him. He will establish our steps as we interact with the world around us and even when we fall, we won’t be cast out. He is our strength.
So. What next? As each of us has experienced before, we will undoubtedly feel again this sense of “what on earth am I going to do with my life?”. Know that the God who made you, made you for himself. So whether you end up on the cover of Forbes or live in a small town relatively unknown, you are intimately known by the Father. And because that’s true, he wants to know you. He wants to delight in you and for you to delight in him, and he calls you to serve.
I’ll end by talking about death, cheery for a commencement address, right?
C.S. Lewis has two quotes that I find work beautifully together as I seek to know, delight and serve the Lord.
In Mere Christianity, he says “If you read history you will find that Christians who did the most for the present world were precisely those who thought of the next”. It’s as we consider Revelation 21 and the promise of Jesus making things new that we will serve freely and be the most gospel-centered now.
And in The Last Battle, the final book in the Chronicles of Narnia, he says this of the characters:
“All their life in this world and all their adventures had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”
Our souls long for eternity and presence with our God in Heaven. Until we go home to Him, I would encourage you to make the most out of the cover and title page which is your time here on earth and enjoy that which He has for you in this life.