His Way Is Better!

This week, as I traveled back to Gainsville, Georgia for my leadership debrief and Project Searchlight Program that The World Race offers for all returning Alumni, I was able to reflect and remember God’s timing and faithfulness in my life over the last 2 years. To explain this incredible story I am about to share with you, I need to break this up in a timeline. So bear with me…  😉 I have exciting news to share!

November 2019 was the 11th and last month of my World Race missions trip around the world. I hiked 260 km from Portugal to Santiago, Spain in a total of 18 days. (I know, what an amazing way to end a mission trip around the world, right!? I’d love to make another trip back to the Camino sometime in the future. So if you’re interested, let me know!) So, while I was hiking God put it on my heart to do another trip with the World Race by squad leading for Gap Year. 

   (Shelby and I. Picture from the Camino) 

Why?

My friend and I talked about it together and I realized how much I wanted to help lead college students into finding their identity and freedom in Christ and challenge them to deepen their relationships with God. When I was their age, I was so lost but it was also the age where God radically changed my life. I wanted to share that with them, and to encourage and walk alongside them in their spiritual journeys.  

However, when I was transitioning back to the States in the winter of 2020, it became hard. I struggled to keep my focus on Jesus and I began to put up walls. Even though I know God has given me a calling to long term missions, I decided that I wanted to lay that aside and work on myself first. I want so badly to have an education. After growing up struggling with educational comprehension issues, one of my goals in life is to graduate with a Bachelor’s Degree. But even more so now, I really want education and skills to help pave a way for me to use skills into my long term missions calling. (I still don’t know exactly what, when, or how, but I know God is calling me.) So, during the winter of 2020, anytime that missions was talked about, I had a quick no in response. 

In January 2020, I applied to a program that is hard to get into through Stockton University praying and hoping that I would get accepted. I laid my hands over my laptop as I submitted my application praying, “God if I get accepted, then I know this is your will for my life right now.”       I hit submit.      That same week, my friend anointed me with oil and prayed with me at another friend’s house. When we said Amen together, we both looked at the table and right beside us was a lanyard attached to someone’s STOCKTON ID card. We looked at each other and laughed, “No way, this has to be a sign from God!” 

Crazy, right!? I know…

A week later, I got a letter in the mail from Stockton University congratulating me on my acceptance!       Woohoo! I’m praising God!      I even had a conversation with my parents about how we all had no idea how I was going to afford it. My response was, “I know, but I am going to trust that God will provide.” 

Then…COVID HAPPENED ……………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………..still uncertain with anything ………………………… ……………. Oh it’s April, and here’s God dropping squad leading on my heart … again and again!

I literally could not say no to Gap Year squad leading because God had made it so obvious to me that I was supposed to leave in August for 10 months of leading! I needed and wanted to obey God. I was SO uncertain if the Gap Year was even going to continue since we were still living in a pandemic, but now I can say how grateful I am that I obeyed God and chose to trust Him. 

I called Stockton in the summer of 2020, and I asked them if they could defer my enrollment for one year. At first they had told me no, but then I explained what I was doing with my year. I explained that I was about to lead a squad of 30 college aged adults in a gap year missions and discipleship program. The man on the phone paused, and made it happen! So I was now deferred to start school in the fall of 2021. Thanks, God! 

                          …keep reading. 🙂 

During my year of squad leading I knew that I still had my spot at Stockton but the finances were still something I thought about because well, it’s reality. I had even thought about not going to Stockton or making it easier on myself to do online courses. BUT……..

There’s always a but…Haha…BUT this is good…

As I was finishing up my last month of squad leading in Guatemala in May 2021, an email dropped in my inbox. It was from a Stockton University Advisor. I opened my email and the first word that jumped at me was “Congratulations.”     I was speechless.    As I read with my jaw dropped, this email stated that I have qualified for a program at Stockton where I am able to attend with up to four years of no tuition costs and fees!! 

WHAT!?…… I know. My reaction exactly! 

A cool part of this testimony is that when I returned home in the winter of 2020 from my first world race trip, my friend Anne asked me to have lunch with her. Before we ate our lunch together she asked if she could share something with me. She had a word of encouragement from the Lord for me. I’ve known this friend for several years since I started attending my home church, Fusion Church. She has discipled, mentored, and led me on 4 short term mission trips before I launched on the World Race and since then has partnered with me in prayer. During our lunch she asked me if sacrifice and taking up my cross (Luke 9:23) means anything to me during my transition. I was unsure then, but I can say that her word of encouragement from the Lord makes a whole lot of sense now. 

  My friend, Anne on the far right. (old photo) 

Giving up another whole year of college, work, and family was my sacrifice. But look at God and how He showed Himself faithful to me. It was through my obedience and trust, He turned around and provided me a way to return back to college at no cost! Hallelujah!! I could have not had that opportunity the year before. 

It was all His timing! I’m so excited to be studying Pre- occupational Therapy! And I am so grateful that I get to share this story with you to glorify Him to keep showing the world that He is worthy! He doesn’t stop moving, He doesn’t stop working. I really believe that He is allowing me to return because it is all part of His plan. All I want is to do His will and obey Him. He has me right where my feet are planted. 

Now that it’s official that I’ll be returning to college to get my Bachelor’s Degree, it makes sense to me why I feel called to the States right now just as much as I feel called internationally. I’m content with that right now and ready for how God uses me through this next season. 

My challenge to you is the same. As Jesus speaks to the crowd, He also is speaking to you through Luke 9:23-24. “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it.”

What things are you controlling on your own that you need to renounce to follow after Jesus? Are you willing to lose your life to save it? Or what are you sacrificing to follow His will?

For those who are feeling a tug on their heart to know more:

The Father just wants our heart. He desires that we respond to His love by knowing Him through Jesus. And laying down our life is another hard choice to make but it’s the best choice. Through it we get to experience life with Him, be used by Him, and encounter Him by His presence. When we choose to follow Jesus and take up our cross it is saying that we’re dying to ourselves so that Jesus can do a work in us and through us. What is your choice today? Would you like to see His faithfulness? What if I told you that He has already been faithful to you but you have not recognized it yet? It’s you. You’re still alive and breathing and He is not finished with you. He is inviting you to know Him and that’s just through knowing, believing, confessing, and turning away from your old self. Your NEW self becomes your identity in Him and not the identity found in the world. His way is better!

“But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of HIs Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.” – Romans 5:8-10

“Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” – Matthew 6:33-34

Please feel free to reach out to me if you like someone to listen or pray with you. I’m available!

Thank you to everyone who has partnered with me in prayer through the years and has encouraged me and donated to the work that God is doing in my life! you are each a huge blessing! God bless you all! <3