Receive the Blessing. Share the Blessing.
Baccalaureate Address to Novi Christian Academy Class of 2021
June 3, 2021
Good evening, Class of 2021, and all honored guests. It’s a great privilege to be here and have the opportunity to share God’s Word with you. Let’s bow our heads and give this time to God…Dear heavenly Father, we thank you for this time together as a family of believers. We thank you for each of these students and the beautiful families they represent. Thank you, God, that they have completed their coursework and stand ready to embark on their future. Please make their future bright and alive with a passion for you God, and your work you have planned for them. Keep us, God, under the protection of your wing, and let your Word and Kingdom go forth. In Jesus name, Amen.
The scripture we will focus on tonight is Psalm 103:17–19. It’s a beautiful blessing:
17 But from everlasting to everlasting
the Lord’s love is with those who fear him,
and his righteousness with their children’s children —
18 with those who keep his covenant
and remember to obey his precepts.
19 The Lord has established his throne in heaven,
and his kingdom rules over all.
You, Novi Christian Academy, Class of 2021, are the recipients of God’s favor and blessings on your life. Your parent’s faithfulness to God, and their desire for you to follow him, ultimately brought you to Novi Christian Academy, and to this day when we are celebrating your completion of high school. Perhaps your grandparents and maybe their parents, your great-grandparents, were also Christ followers, and have passed their legacy of faith down through the generations of your family. Maybe your parents were the first to follow Christ in your family. In any case, we know it’s true that God’s blessings flow into your life because of the legacy of faith you have received from your family.
I, too, received the beautiful blessing of a legacy of faith from my family. In fact, my family’s faith journey began over 80 years ago in Pontiac, MI. In 1938, my grandpa and grandma, Herbert and Helen Baynes, lived in Pontiac, MI, with their three young children, and my grandpa worked at the Fisher Auto Body Plant. He rode the bus to work every day with a neighbor and friend, Howard Mader. Howard was a Christian, and Howard and his wife, Mary, were active in their church. My grandma and grandpa had emigrated to the United States from England as children, and neither had an active faith in God.
Howard Mader made a choice to invite my grandpa and grandma to church. My grandpa said thanks, but no thanks. Several times, Howard extended this invitation, and several times, was politely told no, but thanks. One day, the Mader’s church was having a Revival Service, which was a week-long series of church services held in a huge tent. Howard once again asked if Herbert and Helen would attend. It was a special event. He thought they would enjoy it. Out of exasperation, my grandpa said, yes, they would come.
Well, in this 1938 tent meeting, the congregation was seated with all the women on one side of the tent and the men on the other. The guest evangelist brought a powerful message and shared the Gospel of Jesus Christ…his great sacrifice of his life on the cross for our sins, his death, burial and resurrection, and the good news that we have hope of eternity with God, if we believe in Christ as our savior. That night, my grandma and grandpa, Herbert and Helen Baynes, both went forward to the altar unbeknownst to each other, and met there at the front of the tent. They both gave their lives to Jesus that very night!
My grandpa felt called to the ministry, so my grandparents packed up their young family, including my dad who was the baby, and moved to Kentucky to attend Kentucky Christian College. My grandpa earned his degree and became an ordained pastor and ministered to thousands of people during his 50-year ministry. My two aunts, my uncle, and my dad all were called to full time ministry, and passed on their legacy of faith to me and my family. That legacy of faith continues with me and my children and all my cousins and their children…we have over 60 people in my family who are following Christ in their lives, and thousands more who came to know the saving grace of Jesus Christ.
All because Howard Mader made a choice to ask my grandpa to church and kept asking until he said yes.
The important question that I ask of you tonight is, “What will be the legacy of your life? What story will the days of your life tell? Will you invest your life for eternity, or spend it, wasting the days on things that do not matter, on issues that will quickly fade away? What is the legacy you will leave for your own children, and their children?
Tonight’s topic is the Generational Blessings of God. All through scripture, we learn about how God works through generations. He says, I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob…God blesses the generations of the faithful.
We must receive God’s blessing…and share God’s blessing.
To receive the blessings of God means taking responsibility for your own behavior, decisions, and attitudes so you may fully embrace God’s amazing vision for your life leaving a legacy that points others to Him.
Receive the Blessing. Share the blessing.
First, Decide who you will be. You are about to step into your life as an adult. The most important choice you will ever make is here before you, as you embark on the Rest of Your Life. Reflect on what you yourself believe is true. Your parents and teachers have taught you to revere the Lord and follow his precepts, but You must make a choice for yourself about what you hold as absolutely true…and whom you will serve. Will you listen to the world, or the Word?
When I was growing up, and would be heading out the door, my mom would always say, “Remember who you are.” What she meant was…remember your identity in Christ. As Christians, we identify with Christ because he has opened the door to a relationship with God.
The Bible tells us that our identity in Christ is part of accepting His gift of eternal life through faith. Jesus gave His life on earth and rose from the grave to conquer death and sanctify those who believe in Him.
When we become followers and believers in Jesus, we lose our identity of this world and embrace our identity in Christ. Our identity in Christ is being a member of His body, the church.
Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. -John 1:12
I used to say to my children when they were growing up…“I believe God has given you the capacity and the ability to grow strong inside, to live courageously, to have great faith, and to become a person of considerable influence in your lifetime.
God has made you with such wonderful potential. But I cannot make you strong and good — you will have to choose that for yourself.
I will love you, encourage you, and help you in every way. But I cannot make you a great person. You will have to decide that you want to be excellent of character and then make the hard decisions to become the best you can be, to follow hard after God, and to live into your potential.
I say the same to you today. Decide who you will be.
Second, Decide how you will live your life.
Before I was born the Lord called me;
from my mother’s womb he has spoken my name.
Isaiah 49:1
God has placed a call on your life!
Will you answer His call and fulfill God’s purpose in your life? Many young people question what purpose God has for their life. You might wonder what career you should pursue, or how you can make a difference, just being one person. Let me assure you that the purpose God created you for is to receive his blessing, trust him, and share His blessing of salvation in the way you live your life every day
Make your own decisions on…
~how you spend your time
~With whom you spend your life
~how you will act
~what you will allow your eyes to see and ears to hear
~what attitude you will have
~what dreams you will dream
~what accomplishments you will make
God has created you with the potential to live a purposeful, meaningful life that is spiritually strong and vibrant. Step into what God has for you, because it will be better than anything you could ever ask or imagine.
Third, Decide to Share the Blessing.
Deuteronomy 6:4–9
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.”
Class of 2021, be confident of this: wherever God takes you, and whatever you choose for your life’s work, God has called you to share His blessing. Many times, like with Howard and Mary Mader, you could be the only “Jesus” a person will ever encounter.
Be his voice, his hands, his feet, and his love to all the people you meet. Every day, by the way you live your life, you are testifying to the goodness of God.
Love everyone. Love them in spite of it all…love them in spite of their flaws, because of their flaws…just love them. The greatest gift of love you could ever give someone is the gift of Jesus, and the knowledge of his saving grace.
Someone who embraced her legacy of faith and shared it with millions of others was Corrie Ten Boom.
Corrie ten Boom and her family were Dutch Christians who helped Jews escape the Nazi Holocaust during World War II and, by all accounts, saved nearly 800 lives.
Corrie ten Boom grew up in Holland in a devoutly religious family who acted on their faith. During World War II, she and her family harbored hundreds of Jews to protect them from arrest by Nazi authorities. Betrayed by a fellow Dutch citizen, the entire family was imprisoned. Corrie lost her father and her sister in the concentration camp. Corrie survived and started a worldwide ministry and later told her story in a book entitled The Hiding Place.
During Corrie’s presentations to audiences, she would often hold up the back side of a blue cloth of embroidery with hundreds of tangled threads hanging down from it. Many wondered if she was holding up the wrong side by mistake.
As she held up the messy side of the embroidery, she would ask, “Does God always grant us what we ask for in prayers? Not always. Sometimes He says, ‘No.’ That is because God knows what we do not know. Look at this piece of embroidery. The wrong side is chaos. But look at the beautiful picture on the other side — the right side.”
Triumphantly, she flipped the cloth over and revealed an extravagantly embroidered crown — symbolizing our crown of eternal life. The crown was beautifully stitched with threads of many colors but also gold, silver, and pearls. “[In our lives] we see the wrong side, but God sees His side all the time. One day we shall see the embroidery from His side and thank Him for every answered and unanswered prayer.”
“Although the threads of my life have often seemed knotted,
I know, by faith, that on the other side of the embroidery
there is a crown.”
~Corrie Ten Boom, My Heart Sings
Always remember that God is weaving your life into a masterpiece.
I’d like to share this poem by Corrie ten Boom, “Life is but a Weaving” (The Tapestry Poem)
My life is but a weaving
Between my God and me.
I cannot choose the colors
He weaveth steadily.
Oft’ times He weaveth sorrow;
And I in foolish pride
Forget He sees the upper
And I the underside.
Not ’til the loom is silent
And the shuttles cease to fly
Will God unroll the canvas
And reveal the reason why.
The dark threads are as needful
In the weaver’s skillful hand
As the threads of gold and silver
In the pattern He has planned
He knows, He loves, He cares;
Nothing this truth can dim.
He gives the very best to those
Who leave the choice to Him.
~Corrie ten Boom
Class of 2021…Receive the Blessing, and share the blessing.
You and your children will be blessed….to a thousand generations.
