As an adjunct professor, I have appreciated Taylor students in their zeal for the Lord, their wholeheartedness for Christ and His kingdom.
I see this quality with gratitude and have wondered how it arises. How and why do students love the Lord, in contrast to the students I knew at Williams College, 1967-1971?
One factor may be some good habits or disciplines that they learned at home and church and are beginning to adopt as their own disciplines for a lifetime.
Here are three disciplines I would commend, and the college years offer a great time to build them into a routine of life. Students may feel busy now, but life only gets busier, in your 20s, your 30s and the time flies. I recommend building these habits in the student years.
PRAYER each morning. 5 minutes of prayer is better than none, or 15 minutes is better than 5. Just try to grow closer to the Lord in ACTS, adoration and praise; confession and repentance of sin; thanksgiving; and supplication or requests.
Here is a possible encouragement about prayer: The British preacher and commentator, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, said that prayer is the hardest discipline, even harder than Bible study. So I’m not the only one who finds it hard to pray. Persevere.
Another encouragement: When you ask for something in God’s will, He will say yes, I John 5:14-15. He may answer differently than you hoped, but He will say yes, Ephesians 3:20-21.
BIBLE reading and study, each morning. Again, 5 minutes is better than nothing. Read a chapter. Write about it in a journal. Outline it. Do analysis, best verse and COMMITMENT or application, as the Lord shows you how to apply the passage to your own life.
MEMORIZATION AND MEDITATION, which is hard for me. I don’t have any natural gift to remember the words of the Bible. I just have to put in 15 minutes a day, to repeat the verses often enough to own them and let them sink in deeply.
CHURCH WORSHIP is perhaps harder to keep up in these college years, but you have a great chance to build a lifetime habit here.
JOURNAL WRITING can be a great way to see a larger perspective on what the Lord is doing in your life. The psalms can be an inspiration to writing in journals, as, in a sense, you are reading the journal entries of David and others.
SINGING psalms has been a help to me, and I do it in private because I am not gifted in singing.
The list can go on. I have found inspiration in athletic analogies. The disciplines are like the repeated drills for football, golf, basketball – every sport has them.
Train yourself to be godly. For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for the present life as well as the life to come. I Timothy 4:7-8
Russ Pulliam, an adjunct professor of journalism at Taylor University, has been for more than 40 years a journalist and editor, including service as associate editor and columnist for the Indianapolis Star. He serves on the board of directors for World Magazine. He is also a charter member of the Pulliam Journalism Center Advisory Council at Taylor University.
