It\u2019s exam-time. Over the next few weeks most of the youngsters who attend the church will be sitting exams of one sort or another. SATS, GCSEs, A levels, university assessments, music exams. . . From early childhood into our twenties, we face one daunting educational hurdle after another and some of us then go back to do more exams as mature students. Exams can be among the most stressful experiences of our lives — I still have dreams (nightmares!) about school or university exams.<\/p>\n
How should Christians approach them? Let me suggest some Bible principles. I\u2019ll address each one to those of you who are sitting exams but please don\u2019t stop reading if that\u2019s not you. We should all be supporting and praying for those who are facing that challenge, so we all need to know how we can do that, and how we should be praying for them.<\/p>\n
That is the overarching rule for all life\u2019s activities. ‘Whether you eat, or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God’ (1 Cor 10:31). ‘We aim to please him’ (2 Corinthians 5:9).<\/p>\n
Your friends who aren\u2019t believers are driven by all sorts of motivations. Some of them are thinking about their future careers, they\u2019re determined to go far in life. They know that to get a high-flying job, they\u2019ll need good qualifications so they push themselves ruthlessly to do well. Others feel that they owe it to their parents or their teachers to do the best they can. They know that their parents have made sacrifices to provide them with their education so they\u2019ve got to show them that it\u2019s not been wasted. Or they know that their teachers have put in a lot of effort to prepare them for the exam so they don\u2019t want to let them down. Others again are just born competitors. They can\u2019t bear to see other people doing better than themselves — they\u2019ve got to be the winners whatever the cost. And others have just got a vague sense – even if they never put it into words — that it\u2019s a moral duty to do your best<\/em>. Even if nothing hung on the result and if there was no-one to compare themselves with, they\u2019d still feel that they\u2019d failed in their duty if they hadn\u2019t done as well as they could.<\/p>\n Well, some of those may seem worthy motives, others less so, but what they all have in common is this: they leave God out of account<\/em>. People who think in these ways are breaking the first commandment: ‘You shall have no other God beside me’. These friends are living for their career, or their self-esteem, or their parents, or their teachers, or for a vague moral code, instead of living for God himself.<\/p>\n But if you are a real Christian, you have renounced their approach to life, you have ‘turned from idols to serve the living God’ (1 Thessalonians 1:9). Now, everything you do must be driven by your desire to honour and please God.<\/p>\n So as you prepare for your exams — then as you go into the exam room — then in that last minute before you turn over the exam paper — then in the moment five minutes later when you start to panic — then on the day when the results are published, remind yourself, ‘the only thing that really matters is that I should bring honour and pleasure to God my Father’.<\/p>\n What does it actually mean to bring glory to God? It means that other people see God\u2019s reality in the way that you act. Your friends, your teachers, your family, are all watching you, they need to see that God\u2019s power is upholding you, that God\u2019s love is strengthening you, that God\u2019s promises are encouraging you. They need to see that you think of him as sovereign and wise and kind. They need to see that you are depending on him totally and submitting happily to him, and when your believing friends see these things they\u2019ll give honour to God who has shown his faithfulness to you while your unbelieving friends will be confronted by the reality of the God who has been with you through it all.<\/p>\n Of course, it\u2019s not just people on earth who are watching you. Angels and demons are watching you too and again the angels praise God when they see your courage and your calmness and your submission and your obedience to his commands. Even the demons have to confess that God\u2019s power to uphold you is greater than their power to shake you and they are forced, reluctant and raging, to pay honour to God.<\/p>\n It\u2019s our goal to bring glory to God and to bring him pleasure. How do we do that? Well, God loves his Son, the Lord Jesus. The Lord Jesus is always the joy of the Father\u2019s heart. God delights in him – and God delights in us when we reflect Jesus\u2019s character. When God sees Jesus\u2019s faith and love and courage and kindness and zeal mirrored in you, God is pleased. And this time when you\u2019re facing the challenge of exams is one opportunity to bring God that pleasure.<\/p>\n So whatever else you\u2019re praying for over these coming weeks, pray that you\u2019ll be helped to bring God honour and that you\u2019ll please him. Pray that your attitude, your choices, your reactions, will reflect the character of Jesus Christ and show the reality of God.<\/p>\n And for those of us who are praying for you, we\u2019ll be praying for those things too. May you bring honour to God. ‘Hallowed be his name’. And may you ‘walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him…’ (Colossians 1:10).<\/p>\n But now to some specific areas in which you must honour and please God.<\/p>\n Since God has given you this opportunity to study and to learn, make full use of it. ‘Whatever your hand finds to do, do it will all your might’ (Ecclesiastes 9:10). Remember, you are not working to satisfy a teacher or an examiner, you\u2019re working to please the Lord — so do your very best. Paul\u2019s counsel to slaves was, ‘obey in everything your earthly masters, not by way of eye-service as man-pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord. Whatever, you do, work heartily as for the Lord and not for men’ (Colossians 3:22-23). Most of them would have been working for unconverted masters, but they were still to think of each task as being assigned to them by the Lord Jesus, and they were to do it for him. Much of the work must have been tedious and unrewarding but they were to work at it heartily for his sake. Instead of doing the bare minimum needed to satisfy their earthly masters, they were to give themselves to the work whole-heartedly (‘with sincerity of heart’).<\/p>\n If we take Paul\u2019s words seriously, we will want to do every essay, play every scale, complete every exam paper as well as we possibly can. Why? Because we\u2019re doing it for Christ.<\/em><\/p>\n ‘Teach me my God and King A servant with this clause Well, if that\u2019s true for sweeping a room, it\u2019s equally true for memorising dates or proving theorems. You may feel that much of what you\u2019re learning is pointless and say that you\u2019ll never make any use of it, that it\u2019s a waste of time, but that\u2019s not a reason to be careless about it. The fact is that it\u2019s the work that He\u2019s given you to do at this time, that\u2019s what gives it its point. Perhaps you would do well to sing George Herbert\u2019s hymn (Grace Hymnal,<\/em> 707) to yourself each morning over the coming weeks!<\/p>\n Preparing for exams and then sitting them will drain you physically and mentally and you may have very little time to wait upon God. You have to be at school for 8.30; you sit a three hour exam paper; you snatch some lunch; do half an hour\u2019s last minute revision; then rush to the exam room for another three hour paper. You arrive home, sit down for tea – and start preparing for tomorrow\u2019s papers. At last you fall into bed, shattered, with facts, figures and quotations whirling round in your head. Tomorrow will be no different.<\/p>\n Thank God. He\u2019s given us a sabbath. He\u2019s told us that after every six days of labour, we must stop. The seventh day is set aside for a more important work – the work of worshipping him and meeting with his people.<\/p>\n I wrote a Letter from the Manse<\/em> a couple of months back about the importance of keeping a sabbath, so I don\u2019t need to spell this out at length. I\u2019ll just quote here one verse that I referred to in that letter. God\u2019s command to the Israelites was this: ‘Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest. In ploughing time and in harvest you shall rest’. (Exodus 34:21). The Israelites waited eagerly each year for the time when the weather would be just right for them to plough their land and once the time came, they knew that they could afford no delay. If the ground was not ploughed, a deluge of rain might turn it into a bog. They waited equally eagerly for the time when their crops would be ready to harvest, if they were left unharvested, they could be destroyed by locusts, a thunderstorm, or again by heavy rain. So much work to do, so little time to do it in. A day\u2019s delay could mean that a year\u2019s work could be wasted but the Lord said to them, ‘you must still keep sabbath \u2013 yes, even in ploughing time and in harvest’.<\/p>\n Often, at exam time, Christian students feel that they can\u2019t afford to ‘take a day off’ from their revision but the Lord tells us that we can\u2019t afford not<\/em> to. He created us and he knows that our minds and bodies need that one day in seven break from the work we\u2019re doing on the other six days. We cannot function efficiently on the six days if we\u2019re not resting on the seventh and he knows that we need that time to focus on him. Our spiritual lives will suffer if we have fail to set aside that day to set our hearts and minds on him.<\/p>\n Keeping the sabbath during exam-time is a simple matter of faith. We say, ‘we\u2019ll put away our books and our laptops for that day; we\u2019ll spend it seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and we\u2019ll trust Him with the consequences’. Which brings us to our fourth principle:<\/p>\n Many of your friends will be frantic as their exams approach. They\u2019ll worry because they feel that they\u2019re not on top of the subject. They\u2019ll worry because they\u2019re behind in their revision. They\u2019ll worry that the exam paper will be loaded with questions that they weren\u2019t expecting. They\u2019ll worry that everything will go wrong on the day. And when the exam is over, they\u2019ll worry in case they\u2019ve failed or done badly. If they found the exam difficult, they\u2019ll worry that they\u2019ve blown it but if they found the exam easy, they\u2019ll worry that they must have failed to recognise some subtle difficulties in the questions. And you? Well, you don\u2019t need to worry. Jesus has told you that you have nothing to worry about. Read through Matthew 6:25-34. Three times in those verses Jesus said, ‘Do not be anxious’. He assured his disciples that they have a Father who takes care of all their interests. He promised them that if they seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, everything they needed would be added to them and that applies to exam results as much as to food or drink.<\/p>\n Paul echoed Jesus\u2019s words: ‘Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God’ (Philippians 4: 6). He tells us to ask God for what we want and what we think we need — and then to stop worrying!<\/p>\n Exam times are a real test of faith. We have to learn to trust God to do what\u2019s best for us. He has never promised that you\u2019ll be brilliant at everything. He\u2019s never promised that you\u2019ll do as well or better than others in your class. He\u2019s never promised that you\u2019ll get the questions you hoped for in your exam paper. He\u2019s never promised that you won\u2019t get an unfair examiner. He\u2019s never promised that you\u2019ll get the results you hoped for but he has promised that he\u2019ll give you what\u2019s best for you. He\u2019ll give you just as much ‘success’ in your exams as will be good for you in the long run.<\/p>\n He knows what we really need — we don\u2019t. You have your own ideas about your future — what job would be best for you, where in the world you should live and so on — you\u2019ve chosen your exam-subjects with that in mind and you know what grades you\u2019ll need to make your dreams come true. But God\u2019s plans for you may be very different. If everything goes ‘wrong’ on the day or if you fail to get the grades you hoped for, that\u2019s God\u2019s overruling. He\u2019s closing the doors you wanted to walk through, but only in order to open other doors that will lead to greater usefulness and happiness.<\/p>\n Worrying is natural, but for a Christian, it\u2019s completely unnecessary. As you walk into the exam room Jesus walks with you and he whispers in your ear, ‘You don\u2019t need to worry — I know what\u2019s on the paper and it\u2019s all going to be fine’. He\u2019s not telling you you\u2019ll do brilliantly. He\u2019s not telling you you\u2019ll even pass. But he is telling you that you\u2019ll get exactly the result your Father has decided will be best for you.<\/p>\n God\u2019s told us what we need to do. We must work hard six days a week; we must set aside the seventh day as holy to the Lord; we must pray for God to overrule, and then we can stop worrying and we can leave the rest with him.<\/p>\n Freedom from worry is one of the great privileges of being a Christians. It\u2019s also one of the most powerful ways in which we bring honour to God. Your calmness is a testimony to all your unbelieving friends that you really do believe in God\u2019s sovereignty and kindness.<\/p>\n What does that mean for you? It means that you must care about others who are sitting exams too, you must care about them as you care about yourself.<\/p>\n Competitiveness — the desire to outdo other people — runs very deep in fallen human nature but for a Christian it is simply forbidden. Paul writes, ‘Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others’ (Philippians 2:3-4). He was writing there specifically about our attitude to other believers, but the same principle applies to all our relationships. Comparing ourselves with other people and hoping that we\u2019ll do better than they will is selfish and greedy. Yes, it\u2019s important that we should do our best, but it\u2019s not at all important how our achievements compare with anyone else\u2019s. If we come out higher in the rankings than they do, well, that\u2019s nothing to be proud of. Paul again: ‘Who makes you different from anyone else. What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you did not?’ (1 Corinthians 4:7). If they come ahead of us, that\u2019s no shame on us. If God\u2019s chosen to make them cleverer or better at exams than me, why should I be upset about that?<\/p>\n We should be as ready to rejoice in other people\u2019s success as our own — even if they finish up ahead of us. If others are disappointed we should feel disappointed for them. We ‘rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep’ (Romans 12:15).<\/p>\n Again, it will be a powerful witness to our friends (and others) if they can see that we really care about them as we care about ourselves. It may be harder to warmly congratulate someone we don\u2019t like than it is when the winner is one of our special friends, but if we are really mirroring Christ\u2019s love, we\u2019ll be able to do it and mean<\/em> it. It\u2019s natural to pray for our friends when they\u2019re sitting exams but are we praying for our enemies — the people who have hurt us and sneered at us? God is kind and gracious to those who hate and despise him, it brings glory and pleasure to him when we truly love our enemies and seek their happiness.<\/p>\n Well, there are five principles. There\u2019s much more I could say but I mustn\u2019t. After all, you\u2019ve got revision to get on with. . .<\/p>\n God bless you and grant you peace and joy in the midst of all the challenges. I\u2019ll be glad for you if the Lord gives you the results you hope for, but I\u2019ll rejoice much more if you bring honour to God, regardless of your results.<\/p>\n This article first appeared in\u00a0\u00a0the Newsletter of Grace Baptist Church, Stockport, and has been reproduced with permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s exam-time. Over the next few weeks most of the youngsters who attend the church will be sitting exams of one sort or another. SATS, GCSEs, A levels, university assessments, music exams. . . From early childhood into our twenties, we face one daunting educational hurdle after another and some of us then go back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"resource-author":[8770,8771],"topic":[5954],"class_list":["post-34892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","resource-author-rees","resource-author-stephen","topic-life-issues"],"yoast_head":"\n2. You must work hard<\/h3>\n
\nIn all things thee to see;
\nAnd what I do in anything,
\nTo do it as for thee.<\/p>\n
\nMakes drudgery divine;
\nWho sweeps a room, as for thy laws,
\nMakes that and the action fine.’<\/p>\n3. You must keep the sabbath<\/h3>\n
4. You Mustn’t Worry<\/h3>\n
5. You must love your neighbour as yourself<\/h3>\n
\n