MTP 67: “And I Will Give You Rest”: Finding Your True Identity in Jesus through Sabbath Keeping, Roundtable Part 2

This episode is part 2 of our roundtable discussion with Christian professors from around the country. We explore themes of Sabbath rest and identity in Christ, and professors share personal stories and practical ways to keep Jesus at the center of academic life and our identity.

Main Takeaways

• Practicing Sabbath is vital to resisting the pressure to overwork and to reorient identity around Jesus.
• A Christian worldview informs not just professional work but all of life—relationships, attitudes, and service.
• Professors can openly identify as Christians in class while tactfully building relationships with students.
• Encouraging and mentoring students often begins with simply making faith known early in the semester.
• Avoiding work-based identity requires intentional rest, prayer, and seeing worth in how God sees us.
• New faculty outreach, such as gift bags and welcome luncheons, can be strategic entry points for ministry.

Christian professors, we invite you to:

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2. Read A Grander Story: An Invitation to Christian Professors: https://a.co/d/8VoYXSV

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Transcript

0:00

Hey everybody, welcome to Meet the Prof. My name is Shane Hartley and my friend, Spence Hackney and I take questions from college students. We ask them to Christian professors and our hope is to encourage Christ-centered conversations on the college campus. Thanks so much for joining and listening to us now or watching us if you're on YouTube. And you're about to hear part two of our virtual round table discussion with a group of faculty from around the country. This week, I think you'll be really encouraged to hear the emphasis on uh real depth of relationship with Jesus. There's a real theme of rest to avoid finding our identity in our work. So I think it's applicable for people no matter what your work is. Even if you are a stay at home mom, we hope this will be an encouragement to you. uh If you are a Christian professor, would you consider going on meettheprof.com and sharing with us some of your Christian testimony of how God brought you to Christ? That's a great encouragement to students when they can find you that way. And so now without further ado, let's jump in. Here's part two of our round table discussion. I'll say something. I'm David Minh at Illinois Tech in Chicago. I teach chemistry. I want to share my own thought about how to draw this boundary. And I didn't hear anyone mention this before, but one thing that I found helpful is just keeping a Sabbath, keeping a day off from normal work and not just think of Sunday as a normal day. That just is another time to do some more work. My name is Moorad Alexanian and I teach physics at UNCW. Now... My subject matter is the physical aspect of nature. And that, as far as I'm concerned, about the whole of reality encompasses maybe at most 20%. How do you handle the 80 %? Well, there I use my Christian worldview. And that governs me as a person, as a father, as a husband, as a colleague in every way. As Paul said, you have to please God. I mean, when you do something for someone that you don't like, even an enemy, you don't do it for that person, you do it to please God. And uh of course, teaching physics, if you don't teach cosmology, which has to do with origins and beginning of nature, uh I don't get that much chance to talk about my faith in class. However, I don't hide it. Everybody knows where I stand, okay? And it's nice to be a scientist because they cannot tell you, well, if you knew science, you will be a Christian, which is a way of attacking young students especially, you know? But I'm very much involved in writing articles and letters and things that express my views, my Christian views. From childhood, I always believed in a Creator. You can't avoid that logically. I mean, you so when you approach someone about Christ and this and that, I think it may turn them off because they have pictures that are normally negative. You see what I mean? We really are talking about heart issues like our own beliefs of what makes me valuable, where is my identity? And what you're talking about Moorad is like, uh it's so much of what life is lived is in our belief system, our hearts and all, in the chat, would you put here, how have you replaced any of the false narratives of worth coming from work, success, acceptance and all with any kind of truths from scripture. There is a book that's written by Heather Holleman called Seated. And that was one principle that came out for me in the book was that I am seated with Christ. So no matter what's going on here, if I'm rejected by people, I have a place of honor seated with Christ. So what are the kind of things like that? If you'll put it in the chat and Spence is so graciously handling our highlights some of those, too. Yeah, Rick, you've been so patient when you had your hand raised. But yeah, so I mean, if we're, you know, we're wrestling with some of the same things that when we talk with students, they're wrestling with, right? I mean, they, they are easy to get their professional title caught up with their identity. And we had a student who unfortunately cheated in one of our classes. And the rule in that particular class is that if you if you cheat and you're caught, you have to change majors. Wow. uh because they have to get a B or better in the class to become a major and upon the academic dishonesty, they've got an F they can't repeat. So the stakes are really high. And a good Jewish friend of mine, we were both involved in how to talk with her. And it was a great opportunity to have a faith informed conversation with her. It wasn't a evangelical encounter, but it was a grace filled, forgiveness filled. You-are-not-your-worst-day filled conversation about where to go next. And in prepping for that, uh I started to work out what went wrong with her and all the things and what goes wrong with me. So the challenge, I think, with with a noble profession like teaching is that it is our provision. I mean, in terms of income, we know God is our ultimate provision. But stay with me like in the pragmatics, groceries and rent. So it's our provision. It's our purpose because it is a noble profession. It generally is our passion because as we heard from Moorad we love our discipline. It answers questions we think are deep and worth answering. And then where I think we, so that can easily set it up for idolatry if we're not careful, but it's, I think it's disingenuine to try and trivialize it, to try and put it back in a smaller box. It's not, it's a big part of I feel like I'm called. And when those three things line up, when purpose, passion and provision line up, it's a calling. And so how do you then admit that and then move forward? I think for me, was the thing that tripped this young woman up was pace. She was trying to get too much done too soon. She was trying to do too much. She was grasping with a greedy grasp instead of a... uh a faith-filled, it'll happen, God's in control grasp. And so I think about that in terms of when I'm getting out of balance, it's often the pace issue. How am I trying to make things happen versus be aware that God is... I'm working within, I'm moving where I see my father moving. Thank you, Rick. So Spence, can you highlight any of the things that coming out the chat? Lots of great scripture here. was super encouraged by that. um Lots about how God sees me and that there's a purpose for us and I should be aware of that purpose. But then you've got like, you know, the Lord is my shepherd. Psalm 23, I lack nothing. Great. Well, to me, this is so much fun to get to talk about these things. Having Christ at the center of even our worth. When we think about his desire to really free us up, that's a big part of it is getting our motives right that we get, we get to work, we get to participate in even his kingdom work out of a freedom. We're not trying to get our, our self-worth from our work. A lot of you have already put your testimony online at meet the prof.com. And if you haven't done that yet, would you consider doing that? And consider then putting a link to that in like your signature of your email, more and more faculty are doing that. If you on your campus feel like it may be a good next step to have some kind of a gathering for Christian faculty and you would be interested in helping facilitate that, would you consider like this coming fall being intentional with a kind of new faculty outreach? um We have resources available to help with that. If you were able to find the list of new faculty on your campus, we have resources to help give gift bags out and even to host a luncheon that would be like a welcome luncheon for new faculty and even some templates of a program, a real simple program you could do for that. I'm encouraging all the faculty groups to have sort of as a uh lead step the applications of praying for the lost and looking for opportunities to reach the lost. And you know, often the new faculty coming in are gonna be more open to spiritual things. So if you might be interested in helping head up like a new faculty outreach on your campus, let me know. You can shoot me an email, reply. You could put it in the uh chat right now. Shane, contact me about this and I could do that way. I'm just so grateful for all of you where you are now. And the last thing I'd like to do is to hear, like in the chat and out loud, um what are some other subjects that you would like to discuss as a group? When the uh guy came to Jesus and asked him to heal his son, Jesus said, do you believe? And his answer was, I believe Lord, but help me with my disbelief. you know, the secular world tries to, uh Satan is trying to plant seeds of you're no good. You don't know what you're doing. uh And so on it. And for me, I have to fortify and be re-energized. There's a guy named, a pastor named Cliffe Knechtle and a pastor named Charlie Kirk, who basically go on campuses and take on the students in open forums in their, like at Ohio State on the oval, out in the open. But there's a lot of education, a lot of information that he throws out there. He's been doing it 40 years. Thank you, Tom. I just wanted to say that I I try to make it known that I'm a Christian really early in my courses and then I but my challenge is then I want to build some relationships and but I want to do it in a tactful way so I'm always always looking for new ideas and good ways to do that but I do have a good relationship with a lot of Christian faculty at my campus, so I'm happy about that. We have a men's faculty Bible study, and then we have, we do the give out a gift bag to new faculty. And then we've been doing that for a couple of years now. That's been going well. then also try to have a gathering of Christian faculty also. oh But I feel like we could be doing a lot more. just haven't figured it all out yet. oh Well, thank you, Phil. I've heard great things about your campus. It's encouraging to me, I'm kind of new to the academy, though I've been in education for 30 plus years, that some of you folks that have been around a while are still struggling with some of the same things, right? uh Our work can tend to define us if we let it, but it doesn't have to. And I think we need to be purposeful about that. uh I echo what Phil was saying, like, put it out there first day of class that you're a Jesus follower, let your students know, and that opens the door and provides opportunity. um Even my grad students online, like I got tons of feedback. That it's so great to know that I have a Christian professor who is caring and loving and compassionate and that um is praying for me. um And I tell them that and um then that's made, that's really created some open doors. So I think we need to continue to talk about it um and hear from others of ways that they have found contentment in their work without it completely defining them and taking over. And then lastly, I just want to echo uh what our brother said earlier about a Sabbath. uh If we are not doing that, that will make the biggest difference in our life if we will practice a Sabbath. uh It lets us step away from our work and uh focus on the life around us and rest. And it's biblical. And I think we We've missed it when we've not celebrated a Sabbath consistently. Thanks, Shane. Well, listeners, I hope that was encouraging to you. I really enjoyed that round table discussion. And so before we go, if you would please remember to click on like or subscribe wherever you're listening or watching this, and please share this with someone you think it would encourage, especially if you know another faculty member or professor. And if you are a Christian professor, please consider giving a testimony on meettheprof.com. It's pretty easy. to just submit your profile there and it's an easy way for students to find you. If you're interested in hearing more about this ministry that I'm involved with, I'm on staff with Faculty Commons, which is a Cru ministry. Please look us up on facultycommons.org and there are a lot of resources there for professors, encouragement and resources for those who just love the college campus. And lastly, if you would like to personally support my ministry with Faculty Commons, you can give online at give.cru.org, that's CRU.org, / 042-43-44. So until next time, we hope this encourages you to have a Christ-centered conversation on your college campus.