College Life: For I Know the Plans that I Have for You

In a week I will be moving back into my Bloomington apartment and preparing for my senior year of college.  I am a healthy amount of terrified and excited about my last year of college and I am working on wholly placing my trust in the God that has journeyed with me through these past three years.  In these past years of college I have experience God's faithfulness.  I want to share a scripture that I have leaned on during these years that may be helpful if you are about to start college, if you are in the midst of college or, if like me, your college years are coming to a close.

"For I know the plans that I have for you," declares the Lord "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future."

Jeremiah 29:11

This verse gets tossed around a lot.  It is often used as a superficial bandage - someone says it with a smile on their face, as if that will instantly make things better.  My sophomore year of college I took a class on the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament.  My professor gave me some background context to this verse that I had never known before.  Jeremiah is prophesying to a people that have been exiled from their home.  They are hopelessly lost in so many ways - so much so that they are unsure if they can even worship God, they are struggling to figure out what their relationship with Him looks like.  

There will be some beyond crummy moments during the college years.  Friends will do unfriendly things.  You will struggle in classes.  Professors will be unfair.  The four year plan may start to look like the five or six year plan.  

God made a promise to a people who had been forced out of their home.  He makes that same promise to you.  He knows the plans that He has for your life.  And He could have left it at that.  Just that He has some plans, and He's got them under control.  But through Jeremiah, He continues to tell us that the plans that He has are for our prosperity and our joy, not for our downfall.  There will be some dark moments, and there will be twists and turns that we don't foresee, but God has a plan to prosper us if we surrender your life to Him.

If you change your major...5 times...that is ok.  God knows where you are meant to be.  If you get a less than glorious, or even a much less than glorious grade in a class, it will not ultimately be the end of the road.  If you are at the end of the college years and are in fear of the internship that comes next (like me) know that God has not led you through 4 or so years to abandon you at the end of them.  He has a plan for you beyond graduation day.  You can be a little terrified.  I am!  God knew that the His people were scared.  He made them a promise.

If you keep reading the passage in Jeremiah, you find this: "Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart." Jeremiah 29:12-13.  Call on God.  Pray to Him.  Seek Him with all of your heart.  He has made you a promise and He will listen when you are scared or worried about the future - whether it is a test next week or a job interview next month.

God has great advice in His Bible for college students and college grads.  Even though you're not an old barren mother, a guy who built an ark, a young woman who stands before a king to defend her people, or any of those other interesting characters, God's word applies to you.

Here is my advice: pray for your friends in college and ask people to pray for you.  Lift your life up to the ultimate plan-maker; choose His plans.  He will be with you.

~SP

Mom and I, the beginning of my junior year at IU's Sample Gates