Where you at?
The fall semester has started at WSC and I have been immersed in textbooks. This is no doubt an important aspect of study, but I pray I stay focused on the reason I believe God planted me at WSC. I get caught up in the work load forgetting to spend time in His word, praying for focus as I discern God’s call. I think of God’s graciousness in asking adam, Where are you? Theologically, it seems weird that God would ask. He’s omiscient. But i see a reflection of His grace made manifest by actively seeking sinners who have fallen in Adam but have been promised the seed of the women who will crush the serpent’s head.
The days grow weary yet I am hubled by this call to attend seminary. i have met many classmates seeking a similair call and i pray we grow closer to Christ, made in His image, as sons and daughters of the living and active eternal Logos– Our lord and savoir Jesus Christ.
Sola Gratia 
Ryan,
What you’re experiencing isn’t unusual and neither is the dichotomy with which you’re working.
One of the things we encourage students to do is to pray while they study and study while they pray. In other words, we want students to reconsider and even reject the opposition between “study” and piety or prayer. It may be that I continue to over react to my evangelical (SBC and Navigators and Crusade) background, where the “quiet time” was the unbreakable law (indeed we never heard about the moral law of God but we heard about the quiet time constantly) but if fulfilling your vocation as a student takes, let’s say, 3 hours for every hour you are in class then a 15 hour load is a 45 hour commitment. Not that you’re saying this, but I wonder about the implicit pressure that says to a student that they ought to add to that a certain number of hours of devotional reading, By getting caught up in (at least some of) your school work, you are spending time in the Word, aren’t you? You will be next semester and more after that certainly.
More to the point, in this post and others I’ve detected the idea that you feel as if you’re missing out on an experience. I’m wondering about the criteria you’re using to determine whether you’re having the correct or desired religious experience? Yes, we hope and pray to experience a sense of God’s call (the inward vocation) but we always balance that with the external or ecclesiastical vocation (call). I’ve known people who thought they had a vocation with whom the church did not agree! I’ve known people who clearly had a vocation to ministry who lacked a decisive “inner” experience but who gradually developed a sense of vocation over time, sometimes after the external call.
According to the Westminster Confession, our experience of the presence of God waxes and wanes. We live by faith not by sight or subjective experience. I’m sure you know all this but it’s good to be reminded of basic facts. Christ said that he would never leave us and that’s a reality on which we can trust regardless of our present subjective experience.
You might check out Warfield’s booklet on The Religious Life of Theological Students.
Blessings,
rsc
R. Scott Clark
September 17, 2008 at 12:57 pm
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