College Is for (Lasting) Pleasure

The team at Desiring God turned some heads at last year’s CROSS conference by handing out thousands of bookmarks that said, “College is for (lasting) pleasure.” In big, bold letters was “College is for pleasure.” Then in small letters, visible only as you looked closely, was the word lasting inserted before the word pleasure.

There are reasons why college is especially a time for the pursuit of pleasure, whether for Christians or for unbelievers:

• Most of you are out from under your parents’ roof and have left home for the first time.
• You have freedom like never before, and perhaps like never again.
• You have discretionary time like you may not have again until you’re a grandparent.
• You have health and energy like you may never have again.

So, we have reasons why we associate college with the pursuit of pleasure. Tragically, those pleasures are often illicit, unwise, shallow, short-lived, and costly. Many college students live in pursuit of momentary pleasures that give only a thin, brief buzz and then cost them dearly.

“Many college students live in pursuit of momentary pleasures that give only a thin, brief buzz and then cost them dearly.”

That’s not the pleasure I’m calling you to this morning. That’s why we added the word lasting: College is for lasting pleasure. I want to enjoy pleasures that last. And I want you to find pleasures that last and aren’t just a quick flash in the pan, leaving a wake of misery and regret.

God has you here this fall for a reason, and he has you in this room right now for a reason. And so I want to challenge you with a simple case for why college is for lasting pleasure. I have three reasons why.

1. God made you for his purpose.

And what is that purpose? To glorify God. I know this is a Christian school; I hope it’s no surprise to many. This is all over the Bible, but often the first business of intelligent men is restating the obvious. God made the world, and he made you, for his glory.

Perhaps you’ve heard that phrase “the glory of God” so often it’s become white noise. I grew up in church, hearing the phrase often (wonderfully often), and yet it seemed to go in one ear and out the other. What I didn’t realize was that this is no small biblical theme.

As I started reading the Bible for myself in college, I saw it everywhere: his glory, his name, his praise, his honor. This is why God does all that he does.

• He created for his glory.
• He sent Jesus for his glory.
• Jesus died for his glory.
• He rescues us from sin and death for his glory.
• He will remake the world for his glory.

So, as Jonathan Edwards wrote almost 300 years ago, “All that is ever spoken of in the Scripture as an ultimate end of God’s works, is included in that one phrase, the glory of God” (God’s Passion for His Glory, 242).

If you want to know God and make sense of his world, finding lasting pleasure, you need to know that he does all that he does from his fullness of glory and for his glory — and that he means for us, his creatures, to do all that we do for his glory. So, as Paul says, “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do” — study, train, compete, sleep, date — “do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31).

So, first, God made you for a purpose, his glory. And it is so good and clarifying and stabilizing to have a purpose and know your purpose and love your purpose and live for not just a great purpose but the great purpose in everything. Learn that. Know that. Love that. Live that.

2. God made you for pleasure.

God made you to desire and experience happiness. You want to be happy. You long to be happy. You seek unavoidably to find satisfaction, to have real joy. You can’t help but pursue pleasure. And God designed it that way.

The seventeenth-century philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal put it like this (this was life-changing for me to read in college):

All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire [for happiness] in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man. . . . (Pensées, number 425)

God made you to seek happiness, to pursue pleasure — and you cannot avoid it.

“God made you to seek happiness, to pursue pleasure — and you cannot avoid it.”

And here’s the surprise for many: That longing is not bad, but good. In fact, what’s clear as day in the great invitation of Isaiah 55 is that God himself makes appeals to our happiness and pleasure:

Come, everyone who thirsts,
     come to the waters;
and he who has no money,
     come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
     without money and without price.
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
     and your labor for that which does not satisfy?
Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good,
     and delight yourselves in rich food. (verses 1–2)

Do you know what good news it is that the living God would talk like that? It means he intends to give refreshing, living water to thirsty souls. He means to serve us the soul-satisfying bread of life.

The God who made you doesn’t drop in to say, “Hey, stop being so thirsty! Stop hungering, you needy humans.” Rather, he says, “Be hungry! Be thirsty! I made you to hunger and thirst so that I could satisfy your desire. I made you to want real joy, and find real joy, and I mean to give you real joy.”

The problem with humanity is not that we desire. The problem is not that we hunger and thirst. The problem — called sin — is that we take the desire and thirst and hunger for real joy meant for God, and we settle for thin, empty, fake joys apart from him in half-pleasures that do not satisfy.

In other words, as C.S. Lewis said, our problem is that “we are far too easily pleased”:

If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. (The Weight of Glory, 26, emphasis added)

Isaiah 55 calls us to picture a street vendor, calling out to anyone who will hear, “Come to the waters!” Imagine God, on the street corner, lifting up his voice:

Is anyone thirsty? I know you are. I made you to thirst. Listen up, all who thirst: Come drink my cold, clear, refreshing water. All who need strength, drink my nourishing, vitamin-rich milk. All who need joy, drink my exhilarating wine.

The cost has already been covered. Come, receive wine and milk without money and without price. Come, find real joy in me.

God made you for great, enduring, deeply satisfying pleasures in him, and in our sin we so easily settle for mud pies.

“God made you for great, enduring, deeply satisfying pleasures in him, and in our sin we so easily settle for mud pies.”

So, God made you for his purpose: to glorify himself. And he made you for lasting pleasure in him.

Now we have God’s purpose on the one hand, and your pleasure on the other. What should be your focus this school year — and the rest of your life? Should you seek to glorify God, or to pursue your pleasure in him?

We have one last truth, one last reason why college is for lasting pleasure.

3. These are not two pursuits but one.

God’s purpose in you is your pleasure in him.

Or, you can say it this way: Your pleasure in God serves his purpose in you. In fact, your pleasure in God is essential to his purpose in you.

That is, his purpose in you (to glorify himself) comes about through your pleasure in him (which glorifies him).

Whether I take my wife out for a nice dinner, or take my sons to a ballgame, or express gratitude to the worker at the restaurant, you know there’s a real difference between responding to thanks with “It’s my job” or with “It’s my joy.” Duty honors self; joy honors the other person.

Brothers and sisters, this is profoundly liberating. You don’t have to pick between living with divine purpose and living for your greatest pleasure. They are one, because, as we love to say at Desiring God, God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.

And it changes everything. For instance:

• When you open the Bible, come hungry. Look for joy.
• When you pray, ask in Jesus’s name, that his own joy might be in you and your joy might be full.
• Commit to the covenant fellowship of the local church for your joy.
• If you lead, seek your joy in the holy joy of those you serve.
• If you date and pursue marriage, find someone with whom you can say, “Oh, magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together” (Psalm 34:3) — by pursuing together our supreme satisfaction in him.
• If you exercise or compete in athletics, the essential key to glorifying God in your body is pursuing your joy in him.
• If you start a new semester and course of study, pursue it for your joy in God.

At this point, you might say, “Yes, this is significant, but I need some more Bible study to be convinced.” If I had time, I would take you to the teaching of Jesus and track one by one his “unblushing promises of reward.” And then to that great summary of all of Jesus’s teaching in Acts 20:35: “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” More blessed! He appeals to our joy. And finally, I would send you to desiringGod.org to learn more and address your hardest questions.

Pleasure Like Jesus

But let me close with one verse. This is the verse that convinced me most as a college student 25 years ago. Why? Because this verse is about Jesus:

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:1–2)

What was so compelling for me as a college student is that if this is how Jesus lived, and how Jesus went to the cross, then how could this not be God’s design for the very essence and heart of the Christian life?

The cross is the ultimate test — which, for me, made Hebrews 12:2 the ultimate text for seeing that God’s purpose for me and my pleasure in him belong together.

The cross is the single greatest accomplishment in the history of the world. And Jesus, the God-man, is the single greatest man who ever lived. So,

• whatever motive or psychology or ethic got Jesus to the cross,
• whatever fueled and sustained his endurance,
• whatever made possible the greatest act in history, and that for the redemption of sinners, including me,

that’s how I want to live. 

And how did Jesus endure the cross? “For the joy that was set before him.”

Pleasure in Jesus

So, college is for lasting pleasure. Not just pleasure someday, but real pleasure in God in this life. On this campus. In this semester.

Don’t be “far too easily pleased” this school year. Don’t settle for small, fleeting pleasures. Answer your heart’s ache for fullness of joy and pleasures forever (Psalm 16:11).

Set your sights on the deep and enduring happiness in God, in Jesus Christ, that he made you for and redeemed you for.

And when you do, your pleasure in God will make him look really good.

• Your satisfaction in him glorifies him.
• His greatness is magnified when his people desire him and delight in him.

And this school year will count for far more, infinitely more, than getting a degree and making friends and winning games and preparing for future work. This school year will count forever.