FRESH

Bite-Sized Inspiration For New Students

Krish Kandiah

• Publisher: IVP
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9781844742752
• eBook ISBN:
  9781844747030
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christianity

FRESH provides bite-sized daily inspirations and challenges for new students covering everything from writing essays to writing home, from making friends to making the grade, from debt to dating.
FRESH offers a challenging introduction to maintaining a strong personal Christian faith but keeps its main emphasis on discovering how Christian students can make the most of their faith, relationships and studies.
An essential guide to keep the faith - FRESH is bursting with 5 weeks' worth of fresher-friendly ideas from someone who's been there and done that.

WEEK 1: FAITH

Day 1. choice

Day 2. commitment

Day 3. cost

Day 4. confidence

Day 5. core

Day 6. convinced?

Day 7. challenge

UNIVERSITY CHALLENGE: WEEK 1

EXPRESSO CHALLENGE

Plot a graph of your personal growth in faith.

Which were the times in your life that you were closest to God and why?

EXTREME CHALLENGE

Aim to spend time in personal prayer and Bible reading each day for the entire academic year

OR

Aim to pray weekly with a friend

EXPRESSION CHALLENGE

Draw or paint an image that expresses your relationship with God. Take a digital photo of the image and share it online at www.freshspace.org.

DAY 1

CHOICE

I had an identity makeover before I left for university. I binned the knitted tanktops and invested in new jeans and trainers. I upgraded my music system and updated my CD collection. I got a haircut, a kettle and a brand new duvet cover.

Anyone visiting me in my room that first week would have discovered I was a big fan of U2 (large poster on wall), majoring in chemistry (massive tome on shelf) and planning to live on curry (array of spices in cupboard). But was my Bible going to be kept in the drawer or on the shelf? This was more than a practical dilemma. It was a faith crisis. Was I going to be a secret Christian or a serious Christian?

The decision-making process of whether or not to commit to God was similar to the way I chose my university in the first place. It involved mind, heart and will.

MIND

Open days. Prospectuses. Interviews. Once we have decided which subject we want to pursue from the thousands on offer, we then try to find a university that actually offers the course. We research what the course involves, and what grades are needed.

When we commit to following Jesus, we need to do some research to be sure that he really existed, that he was who he claimed to be, that he actually died on the cross and that he really came back from the dead. We need to find out what he offers and what following him costs.

HEART

I looked round one university in a storm and another on a beautiful ­summer’s day. Guess which one I preferred? We can’t base our choice solely on a sudden rush of emotion, but feelings are certainly involved.

There are certain things we will feel if we are Christians. If we have never felt guilty about our sin and rebellion against God, if we never feel grateful for what Christ has done for us, if there is no sense of joy or wonder at God’s grace, then we should consider whether our relationship with God is real or not.

WILL

Finally it’s make-our-mind-up time and we have to sign the UCAS form. We are not signing whether we believe the universities of choice feel right or actually exist, but that we have every intention of going to study there. It is a decision of the will that affects our approach to A levels, our first years away from home, and probably our career and life journey.

The decision to commit to Jesus Christ is not only about what we know or what we believe – it is about what we do. It is a decision that will affect every aspect of our lives forever. Jesus wanted to make sure we didn’t miss the point when he told the parable of two builders:

Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the steams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash. (Matthew 7:24–27)

Imagine two people sitting in the same church building on the same Sunday morning. They both hear the same sermon. They both wear WWJD wrist bands and display a fish sticker on their car. They both shake the pastor’s hand on the way out. For all the world knows there is no external difference between them. But one lets the words drift in one ear and out the other. The other puts a plan into action.

These two listeners are like the two men that build apparently identical houses. It is not until the storms come that the structural integrity of the houses is tested. The house which has a foundation dug into hard bed­ock withstands the pressure; the one built on sandy soil suffers severe subsidence!

Jesus is asking us to check beyond the external observation of religious rituals. He wants us to check if we are connecting head knowledge and heartfelt emotion to action.

Coming to university can reveal what our faith is really made of. Is it based on a real foundation connected to the bedrock of a personal relationship with Jesus? Or is it simply a house of cards that will fall down with the wind of change or the whiff of persecution?

Before my first chemistry lab session, I was shown a safety film. I saw contact lenses melting onto somebody’s eyeballs. I saw girls whose long hair caught fire. I saw acids eating some poor student’s hands. It was shocking. It was also quite different from the film they showed me when I applied for the course: students strolling around campus, laughing as they turned on Bunsen burners, and celebrating as they were handed first-class honours degrees!

The lecturers needed to ram home the message that we were being treated as adults and trusted with toxins, powerful acids and highly dangerous machinery. I had thought that the only way to die at university was out of boredom, but the film showed that the life of a chemistry undergraduate was hazardous.

Christianity is not a hobby we do for fun in our spare time. Our response to the Christian faith has life-or-death consequences. If we choose to check our foundations and put Jesus’ words into practice, we choose a life that will weather the storms of university and beyond. If we just go with the flow, and allow God’s word to impact only our ears and not our lives, then Jesus warns us that we can lose everything.

Some people decide to leave their faith at home when they go to university. Others decide to go with the flow, and over time drift away. Some decide to be secret Christians, others social Christians. Some people decide that their fresh start away from home will be made with Jesus clearly leading the way.

Which will you choose? The following chapters will help as you decide which course to take: not which academic course, but which faith course – hearing Jesus’ words and living your own life, or hearing Jesus words and letting him lead the way.

DAY 2

COMMITMENT

I believe that Adolf Hitler was born in 1889. I believe he took his life in a bunker on 30 April 1945. I believe that between those two dates he was responsible for murdering around six million Jews. I believe many other things about Hitler, but I am not in any way, shape or form, a Nazi. To believe facts about someone is very different from trusting and following them.

What does it mean to be a Christian? It must mean more than believing certain facts about Jesus. Faith, as we have seen, combines intellectual assent, an emotional response and a personal trust in Jesus. Faith also involves both hearing Jesus’ message and living it out. Christians call this message the gospel or good news.

The gospel is more than a bunch of bullet points to be memorized. The first biographies of Jesus tell us details of how he spent time with children, outcasts, religious experts, friends and family. They tell us the stories Jesus told, the emotions he felt, the conversations he had. The entire life and person of Jesus is the good news. However, right at the beginning of Mark’s biography of Jesus, we get close to Jesus’ own summary of the absolute basics of the gospel message.

Jesus went into Galilee proclaiming the good news of God. ‘The time has come,’ he said. ‘The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!’ (Mark 1:14–15)

‘THE TIME HAS COME’

Jesus declares that he is the turning point of human history. The decisive moment the Jewish people have been waiting for has arrived because Jesus has turned up. Now the calendar has to be reset. God himself has stepped into history.

‘THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS NEAR’

All of history has been a preparation for this moment when the kingly reign of God would arrive in a new way. Looking around at our world, we can see that things are not as they ought to be. The world is not as God designed it or desires it to be. It is full of disaster, disease and death, and all this damage is because we abuse God’s gift of free will when we choose to ignore him and his words. But Jesus promises that God’s perfect reign over the earth is on its way. Jesus embodies this promise as he rules over disaster, calming a storm (Mark 4:35–41); as he rules over demons (Mark 5:1–20); as he rules over disease, healing a woman with a haemorrhage (Mark 5:25–34); and as he rules over death, raising Jairus’ daughter to life (Mark 5:35–43). Jesus is the King and he brings with him a taste of the future coming of God’s kingdom, and a taste of the justice, compassion, life and joy of the coming reign of God.

‘REPENT’

Every time we disobey God in thought, word or action, it is an act of rebellion against his rightful rule over his universe and should be punished. The fitting punishment for this treason is death. In the light of this, the good news that God’s rule is coming might look like bad news. But Jesus offers us a time of amnesty. Now is the time to make peace with God, asking him for forgiveness. This amnesty is only possible because of what Jesus did on the cross.

It was on the cross that Jesus offered himself to receive God the Father’s punishment in our place. The obedient Son offered himself as a sacrifice so that our rebellion could be forgiven. The cross of Jesus calls us to repent, turning away from a rebellious lifestyle, deciding to live under the rule of God, and living lives modelled on Jesus’ self-sacrificial servanthood (Mark 10:45).

‘BELIEVE THE GOOD NEWS’

Jesus therefore offers good news. It was good news for first-century Jews living under the oppression of Roman occupation. It is good news for us living in a spendthrift, selfish, sex-mad society. Good news because Jesus’ resurrection proves that his sacrifice was accepted. Good news because our small sacrifices for the sake of Christ will be shown to be worthwhile. Good news because our decisions about every area of life – who we date, how we study, where we shop, what we invest our lives into, why we are concerned about the environment – will show into eternity who we have pledged allegiance to.

Getting to know Jesus, what he stood for, who he is, and what he has done for us is life-changing stuff. It stands at the heart of what we believe. Being a Christian means repenting, believing the good news and committing to following Jesus. Take a look at the prayer below. If you have never said words like these to God, then take some time out to seriously consider this commitment. If you know that you have committed your life to following Jesus in the past, take a few moments to check that this prayer still reflects where your heart is with God.

PRAYER OF COMMITMENT

Father God, thank you that Jesus came into the world to live and die for me. I am so sorry for thinking I was my own master and ignoring and disobeying you for so long. I recognize that I ought to be punished too. Please forgive me for my sins because of what Jesus did on the cross in my place. I want you to be King of my life and I offer you all of me. Please help me to live for you every day with the help of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

DAY 3

COST

Student phone deals often look too good to be true. Some seem to offer more free minutes a month than there are actual minutes. Some handsets they appear to throw in would have Jack Bauer leaving the counter-terrorism unit in favour of pursuing higher education. It might seem the phone to die for – until you read the fine print. You need a scanning electron microscope to find it, but there it tells you that you will be locked into this contract until your grandchildren come along and that after three weeks your package is downgraded so you won’t actually be able to make any calls at all!

Becoming a Christian may at first sight seem to be one of those too-good-to-be-true deals. It offers forgiveness from God, a fresh start and freedom from guilt in this life, and eternal happiness in the next. But the Bible is very clear and upfront about the fact that following Jesus is both completely free and utterly costly. The cross of Christ is the place where this apparent paradox is most clearly seen. The logic of the cross is set out in Peter’s first letter.

But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God. To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps. ‘He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.’ When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; ‘by his wounds you have been healed’. For ‘you were like sheep going astray’, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls. (1 Peter 2:20–25)

Peter was writing to Christian slaves scattered throughout northern Turkey who were experiencing all sorts of abuse because of their commitment to Christ. Peter does not tell them that their experience is unusual. He does not tell them that everything will be okay. Instead Peter tells them that suffering for God is part and par...

Table of contents

• Fresh
• THANK YOU
• Contents
• WEEK 1: FAITH
• DAY 1
• DAY 2
• DAY 3
• DAY 4
• DAY 5
• DAY 6
• DAY 7
• Week 2: Relationships
• DAY 1
• DAY 2
• DAY 3
• DAY 4
• DAY 5
• DAY 6
• DAY 7
• WEEK 3: EVANGELISM
• DAY 1
• DAY 2
• DAY 3
• DAY 4
• DAY 5
• DAY 6
• DAY 7
• WEEK 4: STUDIES
• DAY 1
• DAY 2
• DAY 3
• DAY 4
• DAY 5
• DAY 6
• DAY 7
• WEEK 5: HOLINESS
• DAY 1
• DAY 2
• DAY 3
• DAY 4
• DAY 5
• DAY 6
• DAY 7