‘Twas the night before college, when all through my mind,

My thoughts were stirring, about what I’d leave behind.

The future, at face value, is scary. I want to tell you what I wish I knew as a believer in Christ.

Here’s the secret, the inside scoop: the best way to prepare for college is to not prepare. I don't mean not packing your toothbrush or forgetting to order your textbooks -- I mean that you cannot conceive the future that is before you, so why try to do so (where my control freaks at)?

I always tried to imagine what it would be like – what classes I would take, what friends I would make, what I would do on a Friday night – but these thoughts began to swarm in great numbers. They overwhelmed me. I got so caught up in the ideal, I began to form expectations for what would happen. Don’t go down this road, and if you’re going down it, turn around. Expectations are promises to yourself that you can’t keep. What happens if college happens differently than you ever thought it would? Then, the whole foundation that you built your next four years on begins to crumble, and you are left disappointed and disillusioned.

You are alive today. You exist in this moment. The here and now is within your reach – “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own” (Matthew 6:34 - can I get an amen?). However, God is not confined today, God is not confined to a moment. He wears no watch and owns no calendar. He transcends the past, present and future. Why do we, who are confined to the present, demand answers from ourselves about the future? These are questions we must bring to the feet of Jesus – the God who is in your future waiting for you. This is the God who knows what you’re going to say before you say it, and what you’ll think before you think it. I urge you, future college kids, to release your desire to know the future. “The Lord directs our steps, so why try to understand everything along the way?” (Proverbs 20:24)

You don’t know what tomorrow holds. What if I told you that this statement should put you at ease instead of stress you out? When the storms were rocking the boat that Jesus was in, Jesus was sound asleep. It seemed bizarre that he was so peaceful, especially to those of us that stress, and get stressed about being stressed, which then makes us stress about being stressed about being stressed, when in fact Jesus knew that His father was sovereign, and so He did not flinch, He did not quiver, He did not fret. If you really, truly believe this – that God is sovereign – you will be still. Contrary to popular belief, college is not the end-all-be-all of life. Four years will come and go but your relationship with God is forever.

Take every twist and every turn with dexterity and bravery that say, “no matter what happens in college, I will be okay.” I must remind myself of this every day and I’m already in college. Then, you will be untouchable; then, you will be indestructible. Then, you will be able to sleep soundly in the boat as waves crash around you. Let me tell you, challenges will come – a professor might yell at you or you might spill your $6 coffee down your white shirt or you might trip up the stairs in public one or twelve times – but if you have no expectations, if you have no preconceived notion about college life, if you have nothing to lose, then you won’t lose anything. Makes sense, right?

Get excited for the future. It’s gonna be pretty darn good.