How can a Uni student know God's will?
'Why Am I at Uni?'
This may be a question a number of you are asking at the moment, having
endured the pressure of exams and assignment deadlines. It's very easy,
when we face hard times, to wonder whether we are in the right place or
not, and if God wants us to be somewhere else. How do I know it's God's
will for me to be here? What does He want me to do while I'm here? Or was
it all a big mistake to come to uni in the first place? Don't stop reading
this if you didn't find exams difficult or if you haven't asked any of
those questions. This article is for you as well. I don't claim to have
all the easy answers to all of your personal hassles and hangups. But what
I would like to do is suggest some ways that will help you find answers
to these questions, and at least, to be at peace if they remain unanswered
for the moment.
Circumstances have an uncanny knack of influencing our emotions at times. Our environment can make us feel happy or sad, depending on whether there is good or bad stuff happening. If our entire family is swallowed up by an earthquake, we feel bad. If we win the $3million jackpot we feel great. That's the way we were designed by our Creator -- to be sensitive to the events and people around us (except, of course for us good Aussie males. We won't dare give in to our emotions, will we? That's for sissies...). God Himself responds positively and negatively to various situations. He delights to see His children trust Him (Psalm 147:11); He is grieved and his heart is filled with pain when He sees Man's disobedience (Genesis 6:6). And we, made in His image, are made to be more that unfeeling robots, unable to respond to events around us.
The problem comes though, when we allow our emotions to dictate to us whether a situation is right or wrong. Feeling good about something doesn't necessarily mean it is right, just as feeling bad doesn't make it wrong. Two different people can feel completely differently about the same situation -- but who is right? When I was a student I would consistently feel bad about uni whenever assignments and exams loomed into my sight. I would invariably ask myself, and God, that horrible question at least once during these times: "Am I really meant to be here, or have I just wasted another six months of my life?" Funnily enough though, once the pressure was over and holidays were starting to get a bit tedious, I would be looking forward to going back to study, assured by the fact of my survival thus far that this was where God wanted me to be. When we rely on our feelings to assess our life, we're just going to be tossed back and forth in life like a rudderless boat on the high seas. We need to remember that our feelings change, but God's plan for our lives doesn't (Jeremiah 29 11-13). Read on, and hopefully it will become clearer...
Now this is a touchy one. A common phrase I hear around the Christian traps is "God told me..." God told me to go to Uni; God told me to move to this Church; God told me to break up with my boyfriend... and so on. Just the other day I heard a 'furloughing' missionary state that the only sure thing he had to rely on in this world is the fact that God had called him to serve as a missionary in Ethiopia. That's all great and noble, and I don't doubt for a second that God does specifically appoint and call people to particular places and ministries, and make it clear to them the direction he is leading them in. But is this ''word from God" or whatever you would like to call it really the most reliable thing we have? Some friends of ours were told, halfway through her pregnancy, that God had said that they were going to have a girl. So, out they went and bought pretty girlie clothes and all the nice pink flowery knick knacks (you thought I was going to say knickers, didn't you?) that you need for baby girls. Lo and behold, when the baby was born, it was a boy. Now, I haven't heard if the person who told them has been stoned yet (the punishment for a false prophet), but I do know that it took a little while for these people to come to terms with the fact that either God or they had it wrong; their final conclusion is obvious as they are still Christians. They were convinced they were getting a girl because they trusted implicitly in this 'word' they had received, when maybe if they'd read the Bible they'd have realised that what goes on in the womb is meant to be a secret to all but God (Psalm139:15), and that children are to be recognised as a great blessing whatever the sex.
The most certain thing in this world is not our calling, but the Word of God as we have it in the Bible. I guess the point I'm making is that we don't need to wait around for a clear unmistakable word from God before we do anything ('Should I get out of bed this morning? Wait, I'll pray about it and see what God says...'). If you didn't receive some blindingly spectacular revelation about going to Uni, that doesn't mean you are not supposed to be here. And if you sense what you think may be God saying to you, 'Leave Uni and go get a job' don't just rush off in the heat of the moment without applying the foolproof threefold test:
Strewth, why not go out on a limb (or to be more Biblical, 'extend the borders of your tents') and think of a new and creative way to serve God and be a witness to your non Christian friends? (For some of you this may be letting them know that you are a Christian in the first place (no. that would be just too hard!) For others it may be getting more involved in some of the activities of FOCUS. Who knows?). God is not going to tell us personally to glorify Him; He's already made it clear in His unchangeable Word that that's what we're supposed to be ding with our lives.
If God wants you to do this in certain specific ways, He will make it clear to you ('cause He's the God of order, not confusion); so unless He has been specific, there are some good general principles to follow: