UBC Life

Being a high school student is full of busyness, stress and the pressure to make decisions about the future. Sara shares how God spoke to her through Vision about her future: 

This Vision the “theme” was about renovating your new-found space that you’ve made in your life. Being a junior, college is constantly on my mind. When am I going to take my SATs, am in the Top 10%, am I going to get a scholarship, which school am I going to go to, what major am I going to choose, what do I want to do with my life, and the list just goes on and on. During this weekend, I brought up the fears and worries that I had, and our group leader, who’s in college, told us that she still doesn’t know what she wants to do, and she’s a senior in college. After hearing those words, it churned something in my heart/ brain/soul. In church, we constantly hear that God is the one thing we can depend on, but it wasn’t until that moment that it clicked to me that there are no guarantees in life when you’re looking to the world for answers. In fact, IT IS a guarantee that this world DOES NOT offer guarantees. 

Once coming home from Vision my prayer to God was that I look to him. “’For I know the plans I have for you,’ says the Lord. ‘They are plans for good, not disaster, to give you a future and a hope.’” Jeremiah 29:11. 

I’ve known this verse my whole life but through Vision, I saw this verse differently. I saw it as filling my space that I’ve created with a guarantee that God has a plan for my life and if I keep true to that knowledge, there is no need to fear or worry, because my assurance is placed in him. This is when I truly saw God as the “stronghold of my life,” Psalm 27:1.

Sara shares more of her story and what God is doing in her life:

So I moved to the Clear Lake Area when I was in the 5th grade, and started to come to UBC a little while into that year. And I was a shy kid back then, so I would never want to come to church because I didn't know anybody and I had trouble talking to other kids. I slowly started to get out of that, but it wasn't until Vision in my 6th grade year that I felt that UBC was my "second home," and honestly it has been ever since. Vision for me in 6th grade was such a blessing, it helped me create relationships with the other girls, and now we are sisters in Christ together. Every year Vision affects me differently and this past Vision Weekend, 2017, I saw God in a whole new light.

This weekend I Declared the Right to do ANYTHING. Even as I'm typing this to you right now, I feel empowered by this phrase. Because this world puts boxes on people, boxes with lids. You have the failure and the successor; the rebel and the saint; the druggie and the "Debbie Do Good," the athletic and the nerds, the talented and the ordinary, the lovely and the average, the rich and the poor, etc. And it brings me so much joy to say that our God rips the lids off these cruddy boxes we make, and with his help, we can rip them off too. God doesn't fit into the box because he is the box, he's the WHOLE Container Store, but his box doesn't say, "ugly," or "ordinary," his says daughter, love, grace, peace, and saved all in one. And I wanna be in his box because his box has the power to be ANYTHING. This Vision was an immense time of personal growth, but also a growth within our relationships with one another. These Junior girls have become my sisters and best friends, and I do not have a clue what I would do without them. The fact that our friendship is centered around Christ is AMAZING and allows for us to be able to come to one another and seek advice from a God-fearing woman!! How amazing is that?? These are the girls I want by my side at my wedding, when I have kids, when I travel across the world. By my side when I'm going through the worst pain of my life, when I'm at the lowest point in my life. Good or bad, they'll remind me to give it to God and because of that, the friendship, we have Christ's foundation.