Some weeks ago, the academic secretary of the christian fellowship I attended during my undergraduate days called me and asked me to contribute a little piece to their publication. He gave me the above topic and this is the write-up i gave him to publish, but hey, I still have the copyright, so it is being published here first.
It is usually said that life is in phases and men are in sizes. One very important phase of our lives is our academics. There is nothing such as a spiritual life or academic life. Life is one, but it has many phases, of which academics is just one of the many seamless interconnected phases. An example that comes readily to mind is the leather football. It has many shapes and sides. Take your academics as one of those 5 or 6 sided shapes on the football. Without one, the football is not complete. So it is that our lives are not complete if one area is missing.
The most important factor to realise in the pursuit of academic excellence is that God is as much concerned with our academics as with every other phase of our lives. Has it ever occurred to you that God did not create a world in which He would not be needed? It has been said that no one can understand the use of a product as much as the creator or inventor of the product. In the same vein, God created us and every aspect of our lives, so we can only come into full realisation of his intentions for our lives by acknowledging Him. Prov 3: 5 & 6 says “trust the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths smooth.”
Another important factor to consider is that wisdom is very crucial to academic excellence. Wisdom determines how you spend your time, what kind of people you move with, how you use available resources, how you make and execute plans. Wisdom is not bought in the supermarket. God is the source of true wisdom. James 1: 5 says “if any of you needs wisdom to know what you should do, you should ask God, and He will give it to you. God is generous to everyone and doesn`t find fault with them.”
God is concerned about you. He has good plans for you, to give you a future and a hope. Putting God first is important in our academics and also in every other phase of our lives. Learn to acknowledge God in all you do and never forget to ask Him for wisdom at every step of the way. The question this short piece started out to answer is “what has God got to do with my academics?” The answer is that God has everything to do with your academics because he said in the last part of John 15: 5 that “...without Me you can do nothing”
YOU WILL SUCCEED.
