TITLE:  Suggestions for Graduates
TEXT:  Philippians 3:12-14
PROPOSITION:  We must find a worthy purpose for life.
QUESTION:  How?
KEY WORD:  Suggestions
SCRIPTURE READING:  

INTRODUCTION:

1. Today, we honor our graduates (HS and College) – dinner following evening worship.
2. This morning – baccalaureate address to the graduates.

Worthy Achievement

1. Think how far you have come
   1. Infancy, 1^st grade, tests
   2. Learned – read, write, history, science, math
2. WHY? There must be a deeper meaning to all this.
3. What is the worthy goal in all of this?
4. Is this diploma the end – or a new beginning?

Life Purposes

1. In every successful life there is an understood purpose for life.
2. Text – Paul had a goal in mind – an aim, a purpose, a direction
3. Several important decisions will take place shortly:
   1. Work – career – occupation
   2. Where you want to live – settle down – buy house
   3. Whom you will marry – start a family

Six Suggestions for setting and reaching goals: OUR GOAL SHOULD - - -

1. Be carefully and thoughtfully selected – not aimless drifting
   1. Many major decisions are made by default
   2. Job – Location – Marriage – Choice or Chance?
   3. We cannot succeed if we drift aimlessly through life
2. Be possible of achievement
   1. Goals must be realistic
   2. Otherwise – resentment, bitterness, angry at the world
3. Challenge the best that is in us
   1. 5-talent men – choose 5-talent goals
   2. Reach must be beyond our grasp
   3. What a great waste of a life to “muddle through”
4. Involve service to mankind
   1. We are here to serve others – cooperate – work together
   2. Cannot be happy without some service to others
5. Be something God approves
   1. Honest endeavor
   2. Moral – Legal – Fits with Biblical teachings
6. Have eternal significance
   1. Physical, material – important – earn money, pay bills
   2. Focus on gratification of physical desires – empty in the end
   3. Focus on the eternal – what is left behind when you die?

Conclusion – Not just for graduates – all of us must focus on the eternal