To go to seminary or not, here's today's question. Hello, Pastor John. My name is Brandon, a 23-year-old college student from Georgia. I have felt a call to ministry and discussed it with the leaders of my home church, to which they have affirmed and given me the opportunity to serve in youth ministry and preach on occasion.

The issue I'm facing is that I feel the urgency to be involved with ministry full-time and to reach out to adults and to the community. I know I'm called to pastor, but with this urgency, I can't help but want to skip seminary. Ministry means everything to me, and I know that seminary will help equip me with my ministry, but I feel pressed to jump into the work now.

Additionally, I have this growing sense that we are not only in the last hour of the end times, but that we are in the last minutes and that Jesus is soon to return, hopefully within my lifetime. Is my sense of urgency wrongly placed? Brandon, I think your sense of urgency is God-given and valuable, and I hope you don't lose it.

That is, the massive and eternal realities are at stake that you see, and that's true. And at every moment in people's lives, they could perish. They could slip into eternity at any minute. Everybody we know, we should feel a sense of urgency about. And Jesus could come and wrap things up historically in your lifetime, even my lifetime.

I would love it. Oh, I would love it. Far too many Christians, including pastors, have lost their sense of urgency. They have settled in to a kind of routine that doesn't feel the sense of urgency of the danger that people are in. So, I'm glad you feel it. Now, let me make four or five observations that might shape the way you channel this sense of urgency.

A couple of my own experiences might be helpful, and then a couple of Bible references. It is almost certain that I will see Jesus within 20 years face to face. That would put me at 93. I do not expect to live till 93. My father died at 88. That would be 14, 15, 15 more years for me.

So I feel a sense of urgency not to waste my life. So it's not just a matter of what kind of education to get at the front end of your life. Right. But at every point in your life, you're going to feel this. Every chapter, you're going to feel this.

And you're going to look at the possibilities of what you should do with your life when you're 30 and 40 and 50 and 60 and 70 and maybe 80. And you're going to struggle with the precious days that are left and how to use them best. So that's the first observation.

I'm with you. In other words, I'm not looking from out here saying, "Whoa, you got a problem, and I'm trying to help you solve it." I got a problem. Second, as I look back over 73 years, I have zero regrets, no regrets whatsoever that I stayed in school until I was 28 years old.

That's all I did was go to school from age six to 28. I dropped out of kindergarten. I started at six. My mother tried to get me to go at five. I hated it, so she didn't make it. Back in those days, you could do that. That is, I got my final terminal degree of education, formal education.

And it made sense that I should go as long as I could, get that, because everybody that I trusted was saying, "Go ahead, finish your last degree, and then all the doors that God might call you through will be open." So if you got a willing wife and the Lord provides the resources, I would go ahead and get all the education available to you that your heart would let you get.

I don't regret that. And I was just talking with somebody last night, I'm going to add this note here, who is going back to school at like age 60 from the mission field because he feels lax. And so it may be that we're somewhere along the way, if you do plunge into ministry at age 19, and you go try to plant a church in some unreached people, maybe 10 years later, you're going to say, "Okay, okay, I'm going back to school.

That's okay if you want to do it that way." But I'm saying from my standpoint, I never regretted getting all the education I could. And you are going to be handling the precious, probably the precious Word of God. And if you want doctors to get a good education so that when they do surgery on you, they don't kill you, you better know how to handle the Word of God so you don't kill people with it.

So I know that from the standpoint of being 23 years old, getting more education can feel laborious. When I was in seminary, there was a great deal of urgency among the students in the late 60s. They thought they should be out marching the streets and doing more important things and sitting in seminary classes.

And Professor Bromley, the church history professor, stood up in chapel one day and announced his text for his sermon, I'll never forget it, Luke 3.23. And he read it, "Jesus, when he began his ministry, was about 30 years of age." And he preached for 30 minutes on why we should stop wanting to leave seminary and do stuff right away.

He urged us to be patient. And there are reasons why church leaders are called elders, not youngsters. I remember thinking from that day on, I was 25 at the time, no, not quite, between, I don't remember, somewhere between 22 and 25, he preached that sermon. And I remember my goal, as soon as he preached that sermon, I would like to be done with my schooling and invested in a fruitful ministry by the time I'm 30.

And I beat it by a year and a half, which I was very pleased by. God was good to Noel and me. So here, one more thing, maybe a couple of texts to consider. 2 Peter 3, 8 and 9. This is Peter's response to those who said that the second coming is not going to happen because so much time has passed.

It's not, it's just a myth anyway. And here's what he says. Don't overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years is as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

Now, I think that implies several things for you, Brandon. First, whether the Lord comes, comes back within your lifetime or not, when he comes and he will come, it will have been short in God's reckoning. Second, it has been 2000 years and God has made no mistake. None. This was the plan.

The day is fixed by the authority of God, says so in Acts 1. When the Lord comes, it will be the perfect timing. As we look back over the last 2000 years, are we not glad that hundreds of godly men and women devoted themselves to serious study that they might write things that for us have proved absolutely life-changing?

So you can see the point I'm making is that I'm glad that the sense of urgency, say, that Jonathan Edwards felt or that Luther felt or Calvin felt or Spurgeon felt did not cause them to just go out and knock on every door and not write sermons and not write books that would have proved life-changing for me and motivating for me and urgency-creating for me.

One last biblical testimony, Paul's words as an old man, 2 Timothy 4.6, "I am already being poured out as a drink offering. The time for my departure has come. I have fought the good fight. I've finished the race. I've kept the faith. Henceforth, there's laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge will award to me on that day and not only to me, but to all who've loved his appearing." Now, this is what, Brandon, this is what you want to be able to say when you come to die.

If it's long or short, so you live 80 years or you live to be 25, you want to be able to say, "Fought the good fight, finished the race appointed for me, kept the faith." God has a race for you, a race course. It's a marathon. It's not a sprint.

And he has one for all of us. Ultimately, whether you go to seminary or not is not the main issue. The main issue is, will you run the course with all your might faithfully to the end? It is a marathon. You need to pace yourself. Find your pace, find your gifts, give yourself to lifelong growth in grace and knowledge and serve the Lord till he comes or till he calls.

Amen to all that. But what's your beef with kindergarten? Well, they made you take naps, number one. Good night. I'm five years old. Do you think I'm going to take a nap? I mean, we had to take a mat to school, a mat with a little blanket. And at a point in the day, everybody rolls out their mats and lies down.

I'm squirreling around under that blanket saying, "I want to go home." And the second reason is because Sonny Paul, my neighbor, was home and he was having fun digging in the dirt with his trucks. I wanted to go dig in the dirt. We had a lot across the street and we dug roads and drove our trucks on the side of the hill there.

And oh my goodness, I think five-year-olds are supposed to be out learning stuff by digging in the dirt, not lying under blankets at kindergarten. You heard it here first, folks. Thank you, Pastor John. And for more about this podcast, go to DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn. And speaking of children, should we have them?

I opened Twitter today to see this headline from the Washington Post, "Deciding whether to have kids has never been more complex. Enter parenthood indecision therapists." Now, I'm not sure the question is more complex than it was 100 years ago when the infant mortality rate was 24% in this country.

Nevertheless, having children is a huge decision for sure. And it comes with some really complex implications, especially when you factor in this profound reality, that every child we bring into this world is an eternal being who will live forever. And if there's a chance that they would be unsaved, isn't it better to not have children at all?

Wow, that's a big question. That's on Friday. I'm your host, Tony Reinke, and we'll see you then. 1. The Decision to Have Kids. 2. The Decision to Have Kids. 3. The Decision to Have Kids. 4. Deciding whether to have kids. 5. The Decision to Have Kids. 6. Deciding whether to have kids.

7. Deciding whether to have kids. 8. Deciding whether to have kids. 9. Deciding whether to have kids.