Luke is from Surrey and now lives in London. He is the founder of DLT, works for Alpha, loves eating mango whilst listening to Kodaline or Sia and thinks everything is 'So Good'. Here is his challenge for you...

You’ve made it to university!! You might be in third year battling the dissertation or a fresher working out if you should join the underwater baking society. But either way someone has probably already asked you what you’re going to do after uni. This question used to fill me with dread, having no clear plan or pathway mapped out, I honestly didn’t have a clue. In the panic of wanting to have an answer, I considered everything from signing up for a masters to applying for the MI5 grad scheme. (It’s their loss; I would have been an awesome James Bond). Whether its parents, lecturers, course mates or church family. This is the big question, what are you going to do after University, what’s next?

For the last 10 years we’ve been on a roller coaster with the next tracks continually visible, a clear path of what’s next, from GCSE’s to A-levels to University, until graduation when the tracks stop. This might fill some with dread, others with excitement, maybe even a mix of the two. But what about the here and now?

This attitude of continually looking forward to the future isn’t unique to those studying. From nursery we’re asking children ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ and even adults ‘Where do you want to be in 5 years?’. Society sets this mentality of spending so much of the present, worrying, planning and thinking about the awesome things you can do in the future, how you can best prepare for it and what you need to do to get there. But what about the here and now? What about the people and situations God has placed into your life today?

Matthew 6: 34, puts it perfectly.

“Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.”

Often we can spend too long Preparing and not enough time sharing. Rather than planning, dreaming and sculpting the incredible missional lifestyle you’re going to have post graduation, look around you. Rarely at any other stage in our lives are we going to be surrounded by so many non-Christians, than whilst we’re at uni. We have an incredible opportunity to speak life into others and tell them about the man who changed it all while on campus, in nightclubs, in our flats and in the lecture hall. However that might look, whatever the cost might be we may need to realign our focus back from the future and into the present.

Going against everything we’ve been relying on for affirmation in our academic lives, we have a mission, which doesn’t involve scores, grades and the fear of failing. But one that involves Jesus becoming our battlecry on campus, today. Unlike everything else we’re working for on campus, there is not a pass grade or target percentage, so forget about the fear of failure. Colossians 3:23 sets out this grade boundary  “whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.”

Whilst at university are you working with all your heart, as working for the Lord? Is your focus on your affirmation from ‘human masters’? Is your sole focus on your future or on the hearts you can win for the lord, today?

Here is an incredibly wise quote, not one that you need to recite and Harvard reference. But a quote which we can take to heart and use it to fuel us into action for the kingdom on your campus today:

“Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.”  ― Mother Teresa

My challenge for you, is to look back from the future, moving your mindset to having Christ as your battle cry on campus, today.