The Lord is good and His mercies are new every morning. This psalm is a great comfort to me on a daily basis. Lamentations 3:22 holds the same healing balm and is one I would quote quite often as well.
“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases and His mercies are new every morning and great is His faithfulness.”
This has often graced my lips in the morning when I feel as though failure was yesterday’s song. It is hard to wrestle with the mercy of God and how He can give us mercy in the midst of disobedience and grace to walk in step with Him again. All because of Jesus, we are seen as the righteousness of God.
“He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” 2 Corinthians 5:21
This is a story I would like to rewrite but cannot.
It is also a story I recently laughed about, an act I wouldn’t have thought possible.
It was the last semester of my high school career and the subject of college was so much in your face that it could have been bottled up and sold as makeup foundation. It would have sold great considering it covered everything.
It was a hard time even if I didn’t recognize it then. The last semester I had experienced a difficult rejection from a college. I had been accepted into a small private college that had the appearance of everything that I would have liked to have had in a college: it was centered on God, had small classes, had a great outdoor environment, and it also had cute sweat shirts that they gave away (I wouldn’t know that until later, it’s not at all necessary for one’s college to have cute sweat shirts, but definitely a plus.)
I was invited to apply and participate in a program they call ‘Future Scholars.’ They selected 50 future students to come and interview for a full ride. Because this was a small private Christian school the cost to go there was pretty high, and the only way I would have attended was through a full ride like this program offered.
I prayed about it and felt sure that this was the direction the Lord was leading.
Long weekend short, I was not offered the full ride, and it was a big disappointment for me. I remember crying and feeling the rejection quite deep.
I remember wondering if I should have changed something about myself or if l should have acted differently.
I wondered what God was doing and why I felt like He wanted me to go there in the first place.
I have learned since then that when you hear from the Lord it is okay to continue to pray about a decision and seek Him out. We don’t have to play the game telephone with Him. Sometimes it feels like we get a small tidbit of information from the Lord and then we have to go on nothing and just walk it out to the best of our ability based on what we thought we heard from God. Sometimes it’s God; sometimes it is not – God is still God and He is sovereign. That’s why seeking Him is an important aspect of our relationship with Him because He desires for us to know His will.
“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Romans 12:2
God is not a hard task master who plays with you. Often, I find that He only gives you the next steps because He desires trust and hearts that seek Him out.
After that semester I wondered what God would have for me the next year. I applied to the local public college and received a great scholarship that covered pretty much everything, but I still didn’t really understand what I was doing. I wanted a giant sign from Him that read, “Victoria, go here.”
That was all.
Such a small thing.
I remember when we had a school assembly and the counselors came and talked to us about the local community college. I felt like the Lord was asking me to go there.
I was like, “Lord, this is crazy!”
Yet…..
I felt at peace about it. That was the crazy part.
It was a really difficult semester and one where I felt like I didn’t know up from down or right from left. The funniest part is that sometime during that season I had a crazy thought, “What if the Lord calls me to missions and that’s why He wants me at a community college?”
That doesn’t make sense, why would God have me there? I am accepted into the local public college with a great scholarship…..God, why?
I ended up talking myself out of that and going to the public school. The first semester I felt like Jonah running from Nineveh. I was ashamed of what I felt was disobedience. I didn’t want to talk to anyone about it and felt like I had to carry the weight of that decision. It was a hard four months. It was also sometime during those four months that I felt the Lord call me to Gap Year World Race and confirm it in a crazy way.
This time I didn’t want to say no. It was equally as hard to say yes, too, but so rewarding to walk in obedience because I was walking close to Jesus. God doesn’t just ask us to do things just to ask us to do them; they are in line with His will and bring us close to Him and produce a harvest of righteousness.
I had not told this story to anyone except my mom until this past week in Cambodia. It had been a difficult week and I had an open opportunity to talk with my squad leader, Taylor. I don’t know why, but I ended up sharing this story with her and feeling so much lighter from it. It was hard to acknowledge disobedience, but when I mentioned to her that I had the crazy thought that what if the Lord called me away to missions and that’s why He wanted me at the community college, we both began to laugh as I realized where I was currently…cross-legged on rolled up mats in Cambodia.
The Lord still brought me here even after that disobedience; I had not messed up my entire life.
It was such a moment of release and realization at how much bigger God is than me as well as how much wiser His ways are than mine.
I learned so much during my first year in college and the Lord blessed me with great community from which I learned. I had not surprised Him and He wasn’t at a loss because of my disobedience.
Taylor had asked me if I was struggling with shame or condemnation from that disobedience and I could honestly answer no, but I did have a sense of sadness that I missed out on saying ‘yes’ to God during that time because I love Him and He always has a plan and a reason whether I see it then or not.
“Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.” Romans 6:16-18
