President Costin tells students to ‘Let God be God’ at Liberty’s first Convocation of the semester

Liberty University welcomed President Dondi Costin to the Convocation stage on Wednesday to give his first formal address to the student body. He shared his testimony and delivered a message on the importance of leaning into God’s calling for one’s life.

Costin was announced as the Liberty’s sixth president on March 31 and began his new role on July 1. He is a retired Major General with more than 32 years of commissioned service in a military career that culminated as a senior leader in the Pentagon, where he served as the eighteenth Air Force Chief of Chaplains. Following his retirement from military service, Costin assumed the presidency of Charleston Southern University. He holds five master’s degrees (two earned at Liberty) and two doctorates.

Costin shared about his early life, being raised by Christian parents (neither of whom attended college) and accepting Christ as his personal Savior at the age of 7 in 1972. He said he knew from an early age the inerrancy of Scripture, the fallen nature of mankind, and the sacrifice that Christ made on the cross to reconcile humanity to Himself.

“The beautiful part of it all is I had nothing to do with it,” Costin said of his salvation. “The Bible tells us that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us and that us includes me. The ‘whoever’ of John 3:16 includes me, and it includes you as well.”

Leading with references to the popular advice books, “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten” and “All I Really Need to Know I learned in Sunday School,” Costin said he learned everything he needed for his career as a chaplain at Liberty University. In much the same way, he told students that their time at Liberty University will be pivotal in their future careers.

“Everything that you need to know, you will learn during your time at Liberty University,” he said. “God has brought you here for a reason. God has made you for a mission. He’s preparing you for that purpose. He’s surrounding you with faculty and staff and others who love you with an everlasting love that comes not from themselves, but from God Himself.”

Costin said he first felt a calling to ministry at the age of 16, but he refused to accept it because he felt inadequate and insufficient — and petrified of public speaking. He said he finally relented to God’s calling years later, after attending the United States Air Force Academy and working as an industrial engineer and second lieutenant in the Air Force.

“Years (after my refusal), I learned the most important lesson and the one I want you to take away from today: There is a God and you’re not Him. The job description of God is He gets to tell us what to do. And when God tells us what to do, our job is to do exactly what God wants us to do,” he said.

Once he accepted his calling, Costin started looking for ways to fulfill it. That’s when a youth pastor at his church handed him a brochure for Liberty University’s distance learning program.

“Even way back then, Liberty University was on the cutting edge of educational innovation and brought both counseling and theological education to me before the internet and before cellphones,” he said. “God knew that Liberty University was exactly what I needed, and he put Liberty University right in my lap just as he has done for you.”

Reading from Exodus 2-4, Costin explained how Moses used many of his same excuses when he was called to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. Moses questioned his ability, identity, and authority even though God supplied the answer to each of these worries. Moses asked God to use someone else to be His vessel, just as Costin had done as a 16-year-old.

“God was with Moses through his identity crisis, his authority crisis, his sufficiency crisis, and his ability crisis; But the one thing that God could not stand was that Moses had a propensity crisis,” Costin said. “He could not stand the fact that Moses knew that people needed him to rescue them on God’s behalf and Moses said, ‘I’m not doing it.’”

“It was OK (with Moses) when God had decided he was going to save somebody,” he added, “but it got real when he said: ‘I’m going to save them, and I’m picking you.’”

Costin urged students to not make the same mistake that both he and Moses had made of initially rejecting God’s calling but to fully embrace God’s leading and allow Him to work in miraculous ways.

“God wants you to be the answer to somebody’s prayers, and all you have to say to God is ‘Yes.’ You can make a difference, or you can make excuses, but you can’t do both at the same time. There is a God and you’re not Him. Let God be God so that other people can know that the God you believe and the God you love is the God they should love as well.”

Following Costin’s message, Vice President for Spiritual Development Josh Rutledge invited students to return to the Vines Center at 7 p.m. for Campus Community, where Chancellor Jonathan Falwell will kick off the series “Behold,” with lessons on Jesus’ godhood.