Deus Pro Nobis

As we enter the second decade of the twenty-first century, we have reached an all-time low in terms of our expectations for college students. Both parents and students seem to have ingested a lowest-common-denominator sedative that has led many to enter college with an overwhelming feeling of doubt and desperation. Many parents are content simply to see their children get through college without becoming dropouts, drunks, or drug addicts. In turn, students are content to graduate without their parents finding out how close they came to becoming all three.

Although this is not true everywhere, many institutions have lowered their academic standards while we have been reducing our expectations for our students. But what is most disheartening is not the diminishing academic standards but the degree to which Christian parents and students have increasingly set their expectations on things below rather than things above.

We have been besieged with doubt by the naturalistic, humanistic god of this world rather than trusting the supernatural, sovereign God of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Christian parents and their covenant children, whether enrolled at Christian colleges or secular universities, Ivy League or state schools, have all but eliminated their great expectations by failing to trust the Author and Finisher of our faith to protect the hearts and minds of those who have been His from before the foundation of the earth.

Although Christ has declared victory over the Enemy and has declared us more than conquerors in Him, we have become a retreating, defensive, overpowered, and frightened religious splinter group rather than the gospel-advancing, Spiritempowered, God-fearing, and valiant church of Christ against which the gates of hell shall not prevail. While the Devil’s professors are on a religious crusade to demythologize and deconstruct the beliefs of Christian students, we must not forget that greater is He who is in us than he who is in the world, remembering always this ancient and eternal truth: Deus pro nobis — “God is for us.” If our reigning and ever-present God is for us, then who can ever truly be against us?

Let us not fear man but trust God as we strive to equip humble Christians to be the best doctors and lawyers, the wisest CEOs, the finest governors and presidents, the most sacrificial missionaries, the most godly pastors, and the most faithful fathers and mothers the world, and the Devil, has ever seen — all by God’s grace.