At this time of year, young people are embarking on a new chapter in their lives. Some are heading back to school while others are starting at a new school or college. With this change can come numerous fears: Will I fit in? Will I make friends? Will my friends from last year still like me? Will I be lonely? Will I get on with my teachers and the workload? For Christians there are additional challenges: Will there be any other Christians? Will people laugh at me for reading the Bible, believing in Jesus, and going to church? Will I be able to answer questions about my faith?

It is wonderful to open the pages of the Bible and read the commands to “not be afraid” and to “be strong and courageous.” God is the Great Shepherd of the sheep, and He knows us better than we know ourselves. He is fully aware of our tendency to fear, which is why He repeatedly encourages us to take courage.

One of the best examples of this in the Bible is Joshua. He had every reason to fear. Moses, the great leader of God’s people, had died (Josh. 1:1–2). The responsibility of leadership now fell onto his shoulders. He was to lead Israel into the promised land. Doubts, fears, and anxieties must have crowded in.

God not only anticipated Joshua’s fear, but He also allayed it with three repeated commands: “Be strong and courageous” (Josh. 1:6–9). These commands and the reasons given for them can help us as we begin a new year at school or college.

Take Courage in God’s Promises

God’s first encouragement to Joshua was to remind him that He is a God who makes promises and keeps them (Josh. 1:6). God had promised Abraham that He would give the land of Canaan to him and his descendants. And now, at this critical time, God reiterated His promise to Joshua.

How can this give you courage as you start a new school or college year? It should encourage you immensely to know that God is still about the business of fulfilling His promises. With the coming of Christ, God’s program for world history is for the whole earth to come under His rule and reign (Acts 1:8–9). And we live at one of the most privileged times in history. We can look back at the last two thousand years and see those promises coming to pass. The gospel has spread to almost every corner of the world, and the church continues to grow. God’s promises to Abraham, now fulfilled in Christ, are as true as ever for us.

This perspective should give us courage as we begin the new academic year. Since God is sovereign over history, He is sovereign over our lives. Whatever fears we face in the months ahead, we face them knowing that our God sovereignly keeps His promises. Joshua was surely encouraged to know that God’s commitment to secure the land of Canaan was as relevant as ever. How much more can we be encouraged in knowing that God’s promises in Christ are as true as ever for us?

Take Courage in God’s Word

Joshua must have had a long list of things he would ideally like to have as he entered this new stage of life. Battle plans, logistical capability, and military prowess would all have been helpful. Yet God didn’t provide any of them. Rather, God encouraged him to use the one thing he needed the most and already had—the Book of the Law (Josh. 1:7–8).

In other words, God directed Joshua to His Word. He was to obey it and meditate on it. Why? Because God’s revealed Scriptures are life, and by putting them into practice, he would prosper and have success. Joshua’s courage would in part be drawn from the pages of the Bible.

The same is true for us. As you enter a new school or college year, it would be fantastic to know for sure that everything is going to be great. Assurances that your personal, social, and church life are going to prosper would be wonderful. However, God has already provided what we need in the Bible. His Word is to be our source of courage and strength.

Take Courage in God’s Presence

God’s final encouragement to Joshua is the best of all (Josh. 1:5, 9). God promises to be with Joshua and never leave him. The people of Israel had already experienced this as a collective nation. God’s cloud by day and pillar of fire by night had led and protected them during their forty years in the wilderness. But now God’s promise of His presence became personal. God would be with Joshua, just as He was with Moses. He had the greatest reason of all to take courage: God was with him. And for God to be with him meant He was for him.

This “Immanuel principle” of God being with His people is a major theme in the Bible. With the coming of Christ and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, this is even more true for us (Matt. 28:20). Whatever you face in this new chapter of your life, as a Christian you can know with absolute certainty that God is with you. This is the ultimate encouragement anyone can be given. We have every reason to take courage not in ourselves or our own self-sufficiency but in the triune God who is with us.

As you face change, new beginnings, and even significant challenges, take courage. You have the promises of God, the Word of God, and the presence of God. With these three, Christians can face anything in the strength of the Lord and with the courage He has given to us.

Every Christian home is meant to be a school of Christ—a place of spiritual nurture, loving discipline, sound doctrine, and biblical piety. This is not a reference to Victorian-era portraits of the Christian family; it is the clear teaching of Scripture and the Reformed tradition. Even so, our hectic schedules, ubiquitous gadgets, and misplaced priorities often make our homes similar to those of our unbelieving neighbors. God becomes an afterthought. Here are three things to remember as we seek to build God-centered homes where sound doctrine is the foundation and our Lord Jesus Christ is the cornerstone.

1. We must be committed to the ministry of the local church.

Every Christian family needs God’s appointed means of grace and the shepherding care of godly elders (Acts 20:28; Heb. 13:17; 1 Tim. 3:1–7). The ministry of the visible church is a nonnegotiable for believers and their children. The first Christian families were “devoted to the apostles’ teaching [doctrine] and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and the prayers” (Acts 2:42). They were under the loving spiritual oversight of elders—men who were called to “shepherd the flock of God” and “give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it” (Titus 1:9, emphasis added; see 1 Peter 5:2; Titus 2:1). The church was central to their Christian identity. It is inside, not outside, the divinely ordained structure of a biblical church that Christian families are grounded in the gospel. A faithful church is where families mature in their knowledge, understanding, and practice of sound doctrine. Therefore, Christian households are encouraged to submit joyfully to the ministry of a local church body and to learn from pastors who labor “to present everyone mature in Christ” (Col. 1:28–29; see Eph. 4:11–16).

2. We must be dedicated to regular times of family worship.

Family worship is a time in which the entire household gathers for singing, prayer, the reading of scripture, and catechesis. A Christian home is a worshiping home. Matthew Henry says that “they that pray in the family do well; they that pray and read the Scriptures do better; but they that pray, and read, and sing do best of all.” In family worship we open the Bible, reflect upon Scripture’s unfolding story of redemption, and consider essential Christian doctrine. Reformed catechisms such as the Westminster Shorter Catechism and the Heidelberg Catechism, with their helpful question-and-answer formats, greatly assist us in our quest to learn and digest sound doctrine.

In his Thoughts on Family Worship, nineteenth-century Princeton theologian J.W. Alexander maintains that “family worship, from its very nature, keeps the mind attentive to truth, and familiar with its smallest ramifications.” Through specific times of worship in the home, “the Christian family is brought daily to the fountain of all truth.”

Shouldn’t this be the goal of every Christian home? Isn’t it every Christian husband’s role to exercise spiritual leadership toward his wife (Eph. 5:22– 27)? Isn’t it every Christian parent’s privilege and responsibility to teach God’s Word “diligently to [their] children” and to “bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Deut. 6:7; Eph. 6:4)? Dear believer, “the daily regular and solemn reading of God’s holy word, by a parent before his children, is one of the most powerful agencies of the Christian life” (Alexander). Commitment to family worship provides regular occasions for the entire household to be rooted in sound doctrine—to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (2 Peter 3:18).

3. We must be devoted to informal times of biblical instruction.

Sound doctrine should be taught and learned not only from pulpits and lecterns but also in the midst of ordinary daily activities—at the dinner table, in the car, on the ball field, or in the park. Moses exhorts God’s people to “talk of [God’s Word] when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise” (Deut. 6:7). It is during common everyday activities that Christian families are encouraged to talk about God and His Word and to consider how doctrine applies to various circumstances that arise. Therefore, let us seize those opportunities to explain and apply the wisdom of God’s Word in our families.

Dear believer, just as a plant flourishes in the fertile soil of the earth, so a Christian family flourishes in the sound doctrine of the Scriptures. Indeed, sound doctrine leads to sound living in Christ. Through the work of the Spirit, sound doctrine illumines the mind, transforms the heart, subdues the will, warms the affections, and nourishes the soul. It is truth for life. Whether in church, at home, or in the margins of life, nothing is more important to our families than the teaching and application of sound doctrine. Is this a priority in your home?

At the church I co-pastor, Saint Andrew’s Chapel in Sanford, Florida, we are deliberate about making sure that both our church members and visitors understand the doctrinal basis of our fellowship. As a small way of helping to further that end, we note in our church bulletin every Sunday morning that “we affirm the solas of the Protestant Reformation.”

By way of reminder, the five solas are five points that summarize the biblical theology recovered and proclaimed during the Protestant Reformation. As we note in our bulletin, these five solas are:

• Sola Scriptura: The Bible is the sole written divine revelation and alone can bind the conscience of the believer absolutely.
• Sola Fide: Justification is by faith alone. The merit of Christ, imputed to us by faith, is the sole ground of our acceptance by God, by which our sins are remitted, and imputed to Christ.
• Solus Christus: Christ is the only mediator through whose work we are redeemed.
• Sola Gratia: Our salvation rests solely on the work of God’s grace for us.
• Soli Deo Gloria: To God alone belongs the glory.

Each sola is important, but the first four really exist to preserve the last one, namely, the glory of God. By sola Scriptura, we declare the glory of God’s authority by noting that only His inspired Word can command us absolutely. Sola fide, solus Christus, and sola gratia all exalt God’s glory in salvation. God and God alone—through His Son, Jesus Christ—saves His people from sin and death.

We need the glory of God to be reinforced because it is the hardest truth of all for people to accept. The refusal to glorify God in an appropriate and proper way is basic to our corrupt state. As Paul says in his penetrating description of human fallenness in Romans 1: “They did not honor him as God” (Rom. 1:21).

So often when we talk about God, we describe Him in such a way that He isn’t recognizable as the God of the Bible. I’ve said more than once that if our god is not sovereign, our god is not God. But I must go further. If we don’t acknowledge the sovereignty of God, if we don’t acknowledge the justice of God, if we don’t acknowledge the omniscience of God, the immutability of God, then whatever god it is we are acknowledging, it is not God. We’re not glorifying God as God, we’re glorifying something less than God as if it were God, and to glorify something other than God or something less than God as if it were God is the very essence of idolatry.

Idolatry is our most basic sin, and in it an exchange is made: God reveals His truth about Himself, and we trade in that truth and walk out with the lie. We exchange the glory of God for the glory of the creature. This can be done in a crass way of worshiping something that we craft with our own hands such as a statue or an icon. But there is also a more sophisticated, intellectual sort of idolatry—the reconstruction of our doctrine of God in such a way as to strip Him of those attributes with which we are uncomfortable. All of us have a propensity to reconstruct a god who is not holy, who is not wrathful, who is not just, who is not sovereign. We find it easy to take the attributes of God we like and reject the ones we don’t. When we do that, we are as guilty of idolatry as a person who is worshiping a graven image.

Every day in America, we hear one of the great pernicious lies about God, namely, that we all worship the same god. We are told that whatever we call him or it—Allah or Yahweh or Tao or Buddha—it doesn’t matter. We all worship the same thing. To that I reply, “No, we don’t.” The scary part about religion in general is that it underscores man’s guilt before God, but then goes on to create ineffective solutions to this guilt. The impetus for creating alternatives to the religion that God reveals in nature and in Scripture is idolatry. But even if we boldly confess this truth, we must be on guard against idolatry even within the Christian community. Because we are fallen creatures, we can be religious and be idolaters at the same time. All of us can remake God in our own image, downplaying or ignoring those aspects of His character we do not like. If we do that, we are withholding the glory that belongs to God alone.

The whole goal of our salvation is to bring us to a place where we worship God and we honor Him as God. The great danger is that we make ourselves the center of concern, and we steal the glory of God. In all that we do, the driving passion of the Christian must always be Soli Deo Gloria, to God alone be the glory. And the only way for this passion to be realized is to honor God as God, to understand Him as He has revealed Himself in His Word and not according to the mere opinions of fallen creatures.