None of us have all the answers...

Being at seminary is a constant stream of insight and learning about our wonderful God and His ways, man's desperate predicament and its effects, and the glorious solution found in Christ alone, our hope and salvation.

With more learning always comes the temptation of pride and trust in my own understanding. Over the last few weeks, God seems to be frequently reminding me in a myriad of ways that, although my learning is important and useful in addressing my own needs and the needs of others, the answers will always reside in Him alone, not in my expanding, but so feeble and limited, knowledge of Him. God has given us enough in Scripture for life and godliness, but not for easily answering most of life's most difficult and confusing questions. It is such a challenge not to think you have the answers when God is so graciously teaching you so much about Himself and His ways.

I have to remain in faithful and humble submission to God and deny the impulse to lean on my own understanding in order to life a godly life. I have to administer his Word to the lives of others with patience and love, doing all I can to experience their burdens with them instead of playing the physician in the place of the work of God's Spirit.

As I think about my future as a pastor, I am more and more aware that the key to my usefulness will lie in my humility and brokenness before God as much as my confidence in and faithfulness to the gospel and God's revelation. I pray that God gives my a heart that will weep with those who weep as I attempt to teach and lead, and the humility to respond to His directing instead of my own inclinations.