People Get Ready

I'm looking forward to UConn starting back in a couple weeks. Please pray for me as I prepare for the juggernaut that is the Fall semester. Thankfully because I've been doing supply preaching at a local church that doesn't have a pastor, I have the first four messages I'll give at UConn in pocket. Hopefully that will relieve me to spend more time with students as well as my family during this hectic time. I will be going back to the gospel of John (I did John last Fall), starting where I left off in chapter six. This was completely unintentional, but it just so happens that John 6 contains the first of Jesus' seven "I Am" proclamations in this gospel. The theme this semester as I see it taking shape in my studies is "life"--what is it all about and how do we go about living it? Every time I sit down to write a sermon, I'm thankful I don't have to start at square one. There's plenty that's been said by a lot of people who are smarter than me about the Bible. No matter where I am in the Bible, I always find myself coming back to Calvin's Institutes: "Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves." And as Calvin said in another place in the Institutes, "In knowing God, we know ourselves." Please pray with me that students at UConn would come to know themselves, maybe even for the first time, as they come to know their God this semester.