1 | Your Time with God Doesn’t Have to be Perfect, But it Should be a Priority

The time you spend in college will likely be one of the busiest times of your life! New friends, classes, campus events, clubs, sports, sororities, and more will all be vying for your attention. In the midst of these wonderful things, your time with Jesus will begin to feel less important…

When mid-terms and final exams roll around, spending time reading your Bible and pouring out your heart to God in prayer will feel less urgent than looming deadlines and final grades.

Don’t fall for the lie that says your time with God can wait.

I often thought that if I couldn’t spend an hour with God each day that my quiet time wasn’t even worth doing…But that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Your time with God doesn’t have to be perfect, but it should be a priority.

Your time with God doesn’t have to be perfect, but it should be a priority.

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Also, here’s a bonus thought for those of you attending a Christian university:

Chapels, Bible classes, and discipleship groups are not a replacement for your own time with God! If you only ever spend time with God because you have to, you’ll find yourself knowing a lot about God, but not truly knowing Him.

2 | Choose a Local Church & Start Serving Your First Semester

The habits you form in college are the habits that will follow you into your post-grad life.

While it may seem hard to find a church and get plugged in, especially when you’re gone on winter and summer breaks, don’t let that keep you from being committed to a local body of believers that can encourage and challenge you in your spiritual growth.

Also, you need more than just professors and other college students in your life…

Having peers who love Jesus and know what’s going on in your life is a beautiful thing that I think every Christian needs, but peers often don’t have the experience or wisdom that an older believer has to offer.

If you’re like me, you’ll also have some incredible professors who truly care about your life and want to see you flourish. Having professors like that is such a gift! But, you’ve also got to remember that you’re not the only student that your professor cares about. They don’t have the bandwidth to counsel every student in their classes on their day to day life. This is why you need other believers in your life that can get to know you on a deeper level and speak from an outside perspective.

The Christian life is not meant to be lived in isolation. You need people in your life who are able to speak hard truths to you in love and challenge you to grow.

Similarly, you need people that you can serve and pour into as well. What better way to do that than serving in your local church?

3 | Your GPA Does Not Define You

Your identity is found in Christ, not in the grade you got in a class, on an exam, or in the number printed on your transcript.

I had to learn this one the hard way.

You see, the truth is that being faithful to God with your time does not always mean getting an “A.”

Honestly, sometimes getting an “A” in a class is actually an indication that you are not being faithful with your time. Why? Because sometimes we get so caught up in being the smart kid or gaining the approval of our professors that our GPA becomes more important than anything else in life.

This is so easy to do in college because we want to do well in school and managing homework can be a full-time job, but is your GPA truly more important than Jesus? Your family? Your friendships? Your church?

Pay careful attention to your priorities and make sure that your priorities dictate your schedule and not the other way around. Otherwise, you may turn out to be a hermit like I was for half of college. 😂

If you’d like to read more on this topic, check out this blog post I wrote on prioritizing what matters.

4 | Be Intentional About Building God-Centered Friendships

One of my favorite memories from my time in college is getting together with a few friends on a Wednesday night for a prayer group. That prayer group fostered some of the deepest, most meaningful friendships I had ever experienced and it also sparked tremendous growth in my relationship with Jesus.

Each week we asked each other four questions:

1. How are you doing personally? (In other words, how are you REALLY?)
2. How are you doing emotionally?
3. How are you doing spiritually?
4. How can we pray for you?

Finding godly friendships where you can truly get honest with each other about your life and struggles is key to growing spiritually.

These things take time to develop, but as you start your first year of college, be intentional about looking for and growing friendships that go deeper than the surface. You won’t regret it!

5 | Make Time for the Things You Love Now

Is your dream to write a book, release an album, or start a non-profit?

Whatever your dream is, whatever you love to do, don’t wait to do it until after you graduate.

This is a huge regret of mine. I LOVE to write, but I didn’t make time for it during college. I wrote papers for school, but I didn’t invest time into my creative hobbies or spend time pursuing the dreams that God had placed on my heart.

And now I wonder where I would have been if I had spent the last four years slowly, but steadily making progress toward those goals.

A great example of someone who did this well is actually my husband Caleb! During his time in school, he made his dreams. a priority. His passion is songwriting and music production, so in 2022 (his junior year of college), he decided to challenge himself and write one song a week. Halfway through the year, he had already achieved his goal by writing over 52 songs.

By the end of the year, he had written 78 songs total!

Now, 11 of those songs have been recorded and will be released in his second full-length album titled The Good Life on September 29th. Click here to get a free download of one of his songs and stay up to date on his music!

I couldn’t be more proud! 🤗

Well, there ya have it!

Well, there ya have it! Five things I wish I had learned during my first year of college! I hope they were helpful and encouraging to you!

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