An Open Letter to Crossroads

Crossroads,

On Monday morning, the day after one of your high-school graduations, I opened up facebook and found my newsfeed exploding with new profile pictures. And these new profile pictures weren’t just your everyday “selfies”. They were your profile pictures, and they included “the whole gang”. The contrast between the “selfies” most people identify themselves by and the group pictures you’ve chosen to identify yourselves by tell a story in itself.

That story, put simply, is this: Ya’ll really love each other! And the love that you have for each other is a solid, bite-down-and-chew-on-it kind of love. It’s the kind of love that Jesus talked about when he said that the world would know who his disciples are by their love. It’s the kind of love that is more interested in one another than yourself. It’s real Gospel love, born out of your own experience of the love of God in Christ.

And it’s the existence of this gospel love that is making this season of your lives bittersweet.

Gospel love makes it bittersweet that several of you are moving away.

Gospel love makes it bittersweet that one of you is getting married.

Gospel love makes it bittersweet that life keeps moving and things keep changing.

Gospel love makes it bittersweet that you don’t know how many more pictures of the whole gang you’re going to take.

Don’t be afraid to feel the bittersweetness of this season! When I graduated high-school, I didn’t have any friendships of enough Gospel substance to make the changes bittersweet. The bittersweetness is a great evidence of how God has blessed ya’ll with Gospel friendships, so embrace it, feel it, rejoice in it!

But by all means, as changes take place, don’t look back at this season as “the golden years” with “the perfect friendships”. Keep on living your lives, wherever you are and whoever you’re with, the way you’re living them right now.  “Finally, then, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more (1 Thessalonians 4:1).”

Just as you are growing in the Gospel, grow in the Gospel more and more! Know nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified. Count everything as loss for the sake of knowing Jesus. Continue to explore the heights and depths of the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge. Keep on growing in the Gospel!

Just as you are pouring yourself into God’s people, pour yourself into God’s people more and more! Never before have I seen a group of guys and girls in your stage of life so zealously commit themselves to serving their local church. Some of your local churches are going to be changing. While you will always have a home at Redeemer Church, some of you will need to find a local Gospel church where you live. Join that church. Commit to it in love. Throw yourself into its ministry. Get to know the body there. Be discipled. Disciple others. Serve. Keep on pouring yourself into God’s people!

Just as you are enjoying Gospel-centered friendships, enjoy Gospel-centered friendships more and more! Life is funny, and to use that word again, life is bittersweet. It’s strange when you get to an age where you can begin to look back and realize, “Those people that I lived my life with aren’t here anymore.” And it is tempting to not ever get that close to people again. But don’t, DON’T do that, please. Never stop pursuing deep, real, authentic Gospel-centered friendships. Find them in your dorms. Find them in your church. Find them with someone you can marry! But always keep on pursuing and enjoying Gospel-centered friendships!

Ya’ll love each other with a Gospel love. And because we are in Christ, we have the sure hope that one day we will be with each other in the presence of Christ! The friendships you have built, and are building, and I am sure will continue to build with each other, will be perfected on that day. And so will the new friendships with new people in new places in new seasons of life. So keep on in the Gospel, keep on in the church, and keep on in friendships that are filled with real, bite-down-and-chew-on-it Gospel love.

Your brother,

Phil