For now we see in a mirror, dimly,

Where are you going to college? someone would casually ask.  And six months ago I would casually respond: Well, I feel like this college is where God is calling me, but if He doesn't call me there, He must have something better for me. It was so simple to say that then.  There was this plan; I made it, I loved it, it would serve God, and He would bless it. 2+2=4.  It was just that mathmatical.


Now here I sit, wondering why I had that mindset.  How was I so blind to my own motives?  I told myself and everyone else that I was convinced that God knows best wherever He would send me for college.  Then when God didn't do what I expected, I fell apart.  Well, almost.


All this time God had been teaching me to stand steadfast in the faith.  All this time He wanted me to love Him with all my being.  He wanted my heart, not flattery.  He wanted the deepest part of me to worship Him, not to beg Him for what I wanted.  I told Him I wanted what He wanted.  But a condition was silently tacted on.  I wanted what He wanted if it was what I wanted too.


Now I'm actually learning to want what God wants, to love Him unconditionally.  I can pray to God now with no strings attached.  I know that wherever He takes me for college will be best.  I'm not just saying this from on top of a spiritual high mountain, but from the middle of an expansive desert. 


We see in a mirror dimly...  I do not see the big picture.  But I am learning I don't have to.  Faith is not just a five letter word.  It's belief deep down that God knows what best and He will provide all things for good.  It may not be what I think is good.  But He knows what's good more than I do myself. 


So do I abandon those genuine vocation dreams I wrote about?  Do I abandon the college I dreamed about that was supposed to bring me closer to God, but really seperated me from Him? 


My mentor told me this: If God still wants you to go to this college, the door will still be open in April.  If God's purpose of my being deferred was teaching me to live out patience, faith, and perserverance and God still can use my life there now that I've learned, I can't completely abandon hope.  But now I see something else.  If God were to change my plans, it would be okay.  God's purpose for my entire existence is not to go to this college.  It's to know Him, love Him, perservere in steadfast faith, and love others along the way. I love what I read in Oswald Chambers yesterday (actually found on Feb. 22).  I posted the devotion below.


Tenacity is more than endurance, it is endurance combined with the absolute certainty that what we are looking for is going to transpire. Tenacity is more than hanging on, which may be but the weakness of being too afraid to fall off. Tenacity is the supreme effort of a man refusing to believe that his hero is going to be conquered. The greatest fear a man has is not that he will be damned, but that Jesus Christ will be worsted, that the things He stood for - love and justice and forgiveness and kindness among men - will not win out in the end; the things He stands for look like will-o'-the-wisps. Then comes the call to spiritual tenacity, not to hang on and do nothing, but to work deliberately on the certainty that God is not going to be worsted.
 
If our hopes are being disappointed just now, it means that they are being purified. There is nothing noble the human mind has ever hoped for or dreamed of that will not be fulfilled. One of the greatest strains in life is the strain of waiting for God. "Because thou hast kept the word of my patience."
 
Remain spiritually tenacious.