We’re going to have Andrea Torres (who you might recognize from Studying Abroad: the Waiting Adventure) from the graduating class of 2021 explain to us how we need to find God everyday and stay grounded on Him.
- Find God! & Trust Him!
Andrea starts off by saying, “while I was attending [NCAI], I would consider my relationship with God very weak, I felt confused and forced to believe.” It’s a very tricky balancing act that the administration and chaplain teams do. She does clarify, “Not that I am against it, but the way that it was shoved into my life and heart, made it quite difficult to want to have a relationship with him on my own.” And it can be like that all too easily. There is a sort of expectation from the school community that everyone believes in God, and you can fall into the trap of going with that expectation and being suffocated by it.
Andrea goes on to describe how, “[when] I graduated…, in the very beginning, I felt quite lost.” Right out of high school, she decided to take a gap year to figure out life. In that time, she “[remembers] being in a place where [she] was conflicted about where or what [her] purpose was.” It was then when she learned to find “refuge in God.”
She does remark that it wasn’t until she left her friends and family in Nicaragua to study at the University of Granada in Spain that “the true relationship flourished.” She was all alone and “it was like a thirst for guidance.” We’ve been looking at searching for wisdom in Chapel this year, and so we know that those that search for wisdom in God, those who hear Lady Wisdom’s cry, will find God. Andrea thirsted for guidance, and she got it.
“Living in Spain, most of the people that surround me are nonbelievers, and to my surprise, it has not affected my faith at all, in fact, it has pushed me to always mention Him to my friends.” Imagine that. Andrea went from struggling to know what she believes to searching for wisdom to trying to reflect God for others. But she’s not done. “I would say with certainty that my relationship with God has never been stronger. To the point where most, if not all, my decisions are consulted with him first.”
She then describes her relationship with God by saying, “Praying does not feel like a chore anymore, instead, it is a need, reassurance, and peace. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe in him because ‘he always gives me what I want or what I pray for.’ Actually it is quite the opposite. My closeness to God grew when he started showing me why I wasn’t getting what I want, to trust that it is all a process and he has everything under control.”
I think we’ve all heard that ‘God’s in control’, ‘You just have to trust God’, ‘It’s all in His hands’, or some variation of those phrases, but here Andrea is sharing that it’s actually true. She, like us, grew up going to NCA. She knows what it’s like to be a student at our school. “I remember I would question him when things would not go my way.” We’ve all felt that and then distrusted our school and church and even our parents for saying that God is in control. Andrea, though, continues, “however, I am truly happy that [my plans] didn’t [go like I wanted] because he had waaaaay better things planned for me. That is why I believe that I live a happy life in this country, even though I am 100% alone and far away from my family, it reassures me that I am fulfilling his purpose.”
Wow. That should give us confidence that if we look for God, for wisdom, he will find us. Romans 8:28 reminds us that “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”
She concluded by advising us that, “before [you] graduate, [we should] find peace that everything is already figured out, you just have to put in your effort and God will do the rest, after all, he is your father.”
That’s Andrea’s story. So what should we get from it? What can we learn?
I would suggest it’s just what she said. You have to find God and trust him. In the last article, we had an NCAI alumni who was in a Christian community, but still needed to spend time working on her own relationship with God. In this article, we have Andrea who is in a very secular environment, and says that she needed to find God and trust Him. What are you going to do? Are you going to keep on passively going through your teenage years or are you going to use these very formative times to find God, learn how to trust Him, and continue to
grow in Him?
Andrea also would like to share her perspective about secular colleges which she “would not consider [to have] affected [her] faith.” She continues, “in reality, I would consider [school to be a] transaction, in a way like when you go to a supermarket and you get what you need, after that, you just walk back home. “That is my truth, even though every day I’m surrounded by people who don’t believe me, each night when I get back home, I always go back to him.”
