Life Choices in the Final School Year

High school graduation and diploma exams! How many times these words may have been mentioned in the past few months at school, at home, and in peer groups. The final year is a special year in many ways.

The atmosphere at school was different from previous years. The contact with the other students of the graduating class and your teachers was more intense and mature. Together you prepared for the diploma exams— and now the excitement of the graduation and the results of the exams…

Decisions for life

This final year you also had to think about further education. What kind of education suits you? It is understandable if you experience stress about making choices. It is quite extraordinary that, especially when you are young, you have to make radical choices that will determine your future life. You still have little life experience, and you do not really know what the different professions and studies entail. Yet, now you have to choose what you will do next year.

Other important choices may have to be made in this period of life also. Which friends will you choose? How do you feel about the church in which you were baptized? Will you attend the youth group? Will you make confession of faith? Do you want to live according to God’s Word or do you choose “freedom” and dissoluteness?

Many young people start dating at this stage of life. With whom do you want to share your life? Do you think it is important that the other person seeks the Lord and wants to serve Him? Oh, how can you make these profound, determining choices of life?

Five considerations

Here are five considerations that may help you: First, be sober. Your diploma exams are important, and I hope you will pass, but remember that your entire life does not depend on it.

Second, and very important, it is also good to realize that the Lord must bless your efforts and your choices. Therein, prayer is indispensable. Remember that blessing is not equal to receiving your diploma. Of course, you will be happy if you pass. You may thank the Lord for that. However, blessing is so much more than that; blessing is related to knowing that you are in the way of the Lord. Then it may be that your path goes different from the way you hope but that you still experience that the Lord is leading your way. That alone gives peace for better and for worse.

Third, realize that no education is perfect or suits you perfectly. In every education and in every profession, there are things that are less pleasant, and sometimes it is already disappointing at the start. Do not rush into a decision if this happens. Sometimes you only find out later that it was the right thing to carry through with it, and if you find that an education or profession really does not suit you, you can reconsider.

Fourth, ask for advice from your parents and other family members or friends who know you well. Always ask why you want this education or profession. It is important to know what suits you. Also ask yourself how you can be of service to society and to your neighbor.

Finally, the fifth consideration is the most important. One thing is needful. You must be born again. It is a privilege if you graduate and if you find a further education or a job that suits you. In this you may see the good hand of the Lord, but that is not enough. All these good gifts are the luring voice of the Lord: “My son, give Me thine heart, and let thine eyes observe My ways.”

Do realize that you have a sinful heart and that you do not deserve God’s good gifts. Pray for the heart-renewing work of the Holy Spirit, that you may make the choice of Ruth and of Moses, and that you may spend your life and your gifts to His glory and in His service.

Dying love

The good things you receive are God’s whispering voice, but the adversities of life are God’s calling voice.

Once a teacher was counseling a seventeen-year-old student who had experienced many difficult things. She wondered in despair why she had to go through so much misery. Her teacher was not sure what to say either. With compassion, he pointed to Lamentations 3:27-29: “It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth. He sitteth alone and keepeth silence, because He hath borne it upon him. He putteth his mouth in the dust; if so be there may be hope.” Silently she looked before her, while tears became visible.

Several months later she came back to that conversation. She said that despite the sorrow in her life, she knew that the Lord was not wrong even though she did not under-stand His way. She felt that she did not deserve better either…but without the Lord she could not live anymore.

I wish with all my heart that in these years you may need the Lord for your heart and for your life and that you may find refuge in Christ with all your sins and cares. In an old, daily reading of an English Baptist preacher, I recently read a timeless phrase, “that it is so good to live under the gentle constraint of the dying love of a precious Saviour.” With this God you can get through life and presently you can get out of life.

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