How to Share Your Faith Using Graduation Season
"A graduation ceremony is an event where the commencement speaker tells thousands of students dressed in identical caps and gowns that 'individuality' is the key to success." - Robert Orben, comedy writer
It's graduation season. Time for people to share with the special grads in their lives their 'keys to success' or offer some personal advice of a more practical nature-something along the lines of 'how to avoid getting food poisoning from your refrigerator without Mom around!'
If you're a teen it's likely you know someone graduating this year. Graduation is one of those awesome rites of passage that signify a movement forward into adulthood. Is a graduate finally an adult?? Well...you be the judge-as it often depends on the individual maturity level of the graduate in question! But 'adult' or not, every graduate is marking a transition to the next phase of life, providing an opportunity to celebrate, and also to pause and reflect on what lies ahead.
Graduation can be a great opportunity to launch into conversations about what's really important in life. About goals and dreams and purposes for being! About what you want to look back on in the years ahead so that you won't shake your head with regret and say,
"I wasted it... I wasted the chance I had in college, or in my teens, or twenties...to make a difference in my world."
So use this opportunity to talk to your friends who are graduating and will be launching off into the next stage of life about some of the serious stuff of life. Here are some ideas to get your conversations headed in a spiritual direction:
- Encourage your friends to pay attention to the spiritual dimension of life! Without a strong relationship with God, it's easy to spend your time trying to fill that God-shaped hole in your soul with things like money, stuff, success, popularity, drinking, sex or whatever you 'think' might make you happy. Psalm 37:4-6 promises us:
"Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you your heart's desires. Commit everything you do to the Lord. Trust him, and he will help you. He will make your innocence as clear as the dawn, and the justice of your cause will shine like the noonday sun." (NLT)
If your friends don't have a relationship with God through Jesus, share how important Jesus is in your life and explain how they can have a relationship with Him too.
- Ask your friends about their goals and dreams. This can open up whole conversations about the purpose of life and how God made us to be in relationship with Him. God made each of us with our own unique set of gifts, abilities and passions so that we can find our own unique way to help bring His light and love to our corner of the world. As your friends are in the process of figuring out what they want to do with their lives, it's essential to invite God into the process! When you leave God out of your plans, it's like building a house without a proper foundation. Mt. 7:24-25 says,
"Anyone who listens to my teaching and obeys me is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock. Though the rain comes in torrents and the floodwaters rise and the winds beat against that house, it won't collapse, because it is built on rock." (NLT)
- Sometimes grads are a little stressed out about all the changes ahead. Encourage them to trust God with their future! One way or the other, big changes are ahead for most graduates as they contemplate heading off to college or the workplace. It can be easy to stress out about big changes like moving out of their parents' house and making new friends. Phil 4:6-7 advises,
"Don't worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. If you do this, you will experience God's peace, which is far more wonderful than the human mind can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus." (NLT)
Share how God is your source of security and stability in a crazy, ever-changing world.
When you know that a relationship with God is the secret to a joy-filled, meaningful life, it's impossible to keep it to yourself. This 'key to success' in life is available to everyone-pass it along to that special grad in your life!
