Saturday nights in Seminary...

So I am writing a Paper on synod of Dort for my systematic theology class. It's a 15 page paper and I'm on page 6 and it is due Monday at 1pm. So needless to say I am on a time crunch. Mid-term week is really crazy and you honestly don't have very much time to get done everything that has to be done. It is really frustrating because I am in the place where I am not satisfied with average work but when time is short you do the best you can. The gift of studying theology is that when I am sitting in a coffee shop on a Saturday night feeling quite desperate, God can really speak and move through what I am reading and researching. My paper's tentative title is, I grew up an Armenian and didn’t know it: Discovering Biblical truth within Calvinism. So I am having a good time even though it is pretty heavy material. I am currently writing on the fist article of the Synod which is Predestination and Unconditional election. One thing I am realizing is that the Bible is filled with really hard truths and they are often not easy to swallow. What has been amazing is God gently guiding me into a fruitful theology. I have struggled and had doubts but I am thankful for the men that have come before and labered and worked to help me have a greater understanding of God and His word.Bastian Kruithof tells a story in The High Points of Calvinism a story that really encouraged my soul:

"Some day ago I talked to a man who can be considered a refugee from Hungary where Russian totalitarianism is grinding the people down. One of the first words he spoke to me was: "Predestination." He told me of the several million Hungarian Calvinists who are by no means defeated. He said to me that whenever a brother appears on the verge of despair, the invariable retort is: "are you a man?" That sentence has tremendous significance when it comes from those who are not stoics but Christians who know that God is with them, and that they are in God's unshakable plan and under his lasting grace. I was interested to read this sentence in Hasting's Encyclepedia of Religion and Ethics: "The Calvinistic 'fate' is the incentive to heroic effort, a challenge to play the man."

Samual 10:9-12
When Joab saw that the battle was set against him both in front and in the rear, he chose some of the best men of Israel and arrayed them against the Syrians. The rest of his men he put in the charge of Abishai his brother, and he arrayed them against the Ammonites. And he said, “If the Syrians are too strong for me, then you shall help me, but if the Ammonites are too strong for you, then I will come and help you. Be of good courage, and blet us be courageous for our people, and for the cities of our God, and may the Lord do what seems good to him.”