invest into purpose

Finding Purpose in School 

To all our friends going back to school, here’s your personal reminder. There is purpose in this season. This is a season for GROWTH. Growth in your education, growth in your professional field, personal growth, growth in being impactful.

This season provides for new opportunities, for new friendships, for deep questions, for new experiences.

It’s a LOT of potential growth to juggle. So how do we go into school – whether it’s high school, college or so on – with the mentality and focus of PURPOSE?

It’s EASY to go about wishing the semester or years away, dreading every class and exam. OR it’s easy to go about focusing only on the newfound freedom you may have never had before (side note that I’ll only say once – be careful, friends, of going against your convictions. There is immeasurable grace but always a cost to our decisions).

I think to live these years purposefully is to focus on what matters and to make decisions accordingly. Let’s not forget that every choice we make – in these years and in the ones to come – bears fruit – whether it’s a cost, a consequence, a regret, a life changed, an impact made, a friend who feels loved, an opportunity attained.

We could go on about the very important practical ways to make college an intentional time. But when we look at a bigger purpose for these years and when we asked around for some top ways to live purposefully in college years from grads and girls still in college … three major themes came to play about living purposefully.

1. Time – Be a wise steward of your time. Invest your time wisely. Give it to areas that will be beneficial. YES, that means to give your focus to school, but it also focuses on other areas. Give time to connect to your community, to your friends, to the body of Christ. Be lifted up, encouraged, exhorted, filled up. Because with the stress of school, pressures of society, new deep questions… in the words of one of our friends at SLP, “that’s the only way I made it through.”

2. Friends – It’s easy to go to class and go home. To be in an out. BUT this leaves out a CRUCIAL purposeful intention of these years – dare I say a God-intended intention. Talk to people. Make connections, even if they’re not the deepest conversations you’ll ever had or the closest connections you’ll make. Whether you know they’ll be a lifelong friend, they’re just a roomie to cope with or they’re an acquaintance in class. INVEST in these people. Pour out love onto them. Exude the love of Jesus into the world. People change people. The single way to make an impact in this world is if other people are impacted. The single way to make a change, to love harder, to encourage is to do it to and with and for other people. To walk in and out looking down – it takes away that major purpose of these college years – years where you are SURROUNDED by people, whether you commute or dorm.

3. Stand Firm – College is a MAJOR time for growth in ideas and questions. It’s important to sow into yourself, to stay true to what you believe. To invest in those things. Don’t be afraid to disagree with the masses because sometimes the masses aren’t as big as they appear. Don’t be afraid to allow college to make you more compassionate. DO be wary of the subtle, subconscious shifts in your views. DO really think about what you believe and seek out TRUTH. DO be sure to invest in your beliefs if you want to hold fast to them.

God does have a purpose for your every day and for every season and that includes school.

This knowledge that purpose exists for these years can spur us on to live with that mentality, being aware that there is a greater purpose and a purpose in every day.

College is a time FILLED with growth and FILLED with purpose.

Sweet friends, INVEST into purpose.

I promise, you won’t regret it.

XO,

Meg