For the past several years, it has been my great privilege to walk through life at Taylor with the class of 2026. You were the first class that I helped recruit, which makes this commencement especially meaningful for me.
Over the past four years, you have built friendships that will last a lifetime. You have walked through long nights of studying, difficult conversations, chapel services, athletic competitions, mission trips, floor retreats, celebrations, and countless meetings and ordinary moments that slowly shaped you. Taylor has never only been about earning a degree; it has always been about formation.
And as you prepare to leave this place, there is one truth I especially want you to remember: life will not always unfold the way you expect it to.
I do not say that cynically. In fact, I say it with tremendous hope.
One of the great temptations during seasons of transition is to imagine life as a relatively straightforward path where faithfulness quickly produces stability, success, and comfort. Sometimes that happens. But often, life is far more complex than we imagined when we were twenty-two years old.
There will be seasons ahead that contain disappointment. Some of you will experience closed doors professionally. Some will walk through unexpected health struggles, loneliness, anxiety, financial pressure, fractured relationships, or prayers that seem to remain unanswered far longer than you hoped. There will be moments where you genuinely cannot see what God is doing. And yet, Scripture repeatedly reminds us that uncertainty does not mean God is absent. In fact, the gardener is never closer to the branch than when He is pruning it.
I have recently been reflecting on the story of Joseph who received an extraordinary promise from God at a young age. However, for thirteen years of his life, he experienced betrayal, slavery, and prison. And perhaps most difficult of all, Joseph had to live for years without fully understanding God’s work through his suffering.
What is remarkable about Joseph’s story is not simply that he eventually rose to prominence in Egypt. What is remarkable is his faithfulness long before the exaltation became a reality. Scripture repeatedly shows Joseph serving faithfully wherever God placed him, whether in Potiphar’s house, in prison, or in seasons of obscurity and disappointment. He kept taking the next faithful step even when the future remained unclear.
I suspect many of us would prefer a far more detailed roadmap for our lives. Yet throughout Scripture, God often calls His people to walk forward in faith without revealing the entire picture. Hebrews 11 articulates this well. Again and again, we encounter men and women who obeyed God without fully knowing where their obedience would lead. Abraham went “even though he did not know where he was going.” Moses chose faithfulness over comfort. Countless others trusted God through uncertainty, difficulty, and waiting.
That is still the call placed before us today. Much of the Christian life is not dramatic or glamorous. More often, faithfulness looks ordinary. It looks like continuing to trust God during seasons of confusion. It looks like maintaining integrity when compromise would be easier. It looks like loving others well when it is not reciprocated.
And graduates, I want you to know something deeply important: your worth is not determined by your achievement after graduation. Yes, I deeply hope for Taylor students in position of prominence and leadership to steer individuals and institutions towards Jesus, but the Gospel continually reminds us that our deepest identity is not found in what we accomplish but in the fact that we are loved by God.
I genuinely believe this graduating class is stepping into the world at a moment that desperately needs thoughtful, grounded, faithful Christian leaders. The world does not simply need more accomplished people. It needs men and women marked by humility, conviction, wisdom, compassion, courage, and deep trust in God.
So as you leave Taylor, my encouragement is simple: remain faithful.
Remain faithful when prayers seem unanswered. Remain faithful when the future feels uncertain. Remain faithful in small acts of obedience that nobody else notices. Remain faithful when life is comfortable and good. And trust that God is often doing some of His deepest work in seasons where we cannot yet see the full picture.
My prayer for each of you is not merely that you would become successful, but that you would become deeply faithful people whose lives point others toward Jesus Christ.
Walk forward with obedience. Continue taking the next faithful step. Trust the God who goes before you. And wherever life leads from here, may your lives minister Christ’s redemptive love, grace, and truth to a world in need.
