I was a sophomore at Wheaton College in Illinois when I figured out that only a small number of students were maturing believers and real disciples. There was also a small but highly visible group who were dropping out of Christianity entirely. Most people fell somewhere between those extremes.

I was an in-betweener, drifting toward the drop-out end. Wheaton was a good place to grow as a believer, but it could not supply what I did not bring with me. No school or church can.

I grew up in a Christian home and a spiritually solid church, graduated from a four-year Christian high school. I knew all the right things. But as I began to individuate around the age of 19, I found that knowledge apart from personal realization was not enough. For 18 months, I was on the fence. How I came off the fence is another story. But here is what I learned from that episode and its aftermath.

1. Life at a Christian school can confirm your faith, but no school or church can provide what you do not bring to it.

2. Question your motives. Are you pretending to live the “victorious Christian life” just because everyone around you is doing it? When you leave the “Biola bubble” you will find that it all was unreal. More than one Biola graduate has shipwrecked after graduation.

3. Question your motives. All Christians experience recurring periods of doubt—which Frederick Beuchner calls “the ants in the pants that keep faith moving.” But there are answers, as shown by two millennia of Christian theology and apologetics. What we sometimes call “intellectual doubt” is only a cover for strong emotional and instinctual drives. We want to do what we want to do because we want to do it, and Christianity is a ball and chain. The truth doesn’t matter when it impedes our desires.

4. There are lots of “Christians” out there who get publicity by being silly, offensive, and setting a bad example. They’re interesting in the same way a train wreck is interesting, but to get the whole picture you need to look at the good examples too.

5. Remember that Christ is neither a conservative nor a liberal.

6. Talk to people you trust. Ask them why they believe as they do. Ask yourself the same.

7. Read. C. S. Lewis was my discipler after Christ found me. Perelandra got me over a bleak period. After that, I read everything else he ever wrote.

8. Few things helped me more than spending time with committed believers in my InterVarsity chapter, a Christian fellowship group. I respected their lives, intelligence, honesty and spiritual maturity.

9. Resist pressure. We take courses, we have part-time jobs, we face family catastrophes and personal calamities, all of which burn up our time and emotional energy. Take a meat-ax to your schedule if you have to.

Nothing is as important to your life as having regular face time with God. He loves you so much that He went to the cross just to be with you.