God's Plan Beyond College

God's Plan Beyond College

What if you get everything you wanted out of college and it still isn’t enough?

You find a group of people to belong to. You earn good grades. You get a good internship. Maybe you even figure out what you want to do for the rest of your life. You achieve everything you wanted, and yet you still feel like something is missing. Even amongst your friends, you still feel like you don’t fully belong. There is an emptiness and dissatisfaction. You still don’t quite feel at home.

Do you want to know why? We are exiles.

Exiles are what the Bible calls resident aliens who don’t fully belong in the society they live in. Like immigrants, exiles live in a foreign country. They make a home where they are, but are never comfortable there. Since they are citizens of another country, with a different set of values and beliefs, they never quite fit in. It’s because they are not home. Likewise, perhaps the reason some of you might struggle, especially after coming to faith, is that you are more aware that this world is not your home and that you’re an exile.

So… what are we supposed to do? A passage like Jeremiah 29 helps us and gives us hope we can hold on to as we live as exiles. In this passage, God’s people were exiled to Babylon, an enemy’s city. God tells them that He has a plan to bring them home, but only after they have remained there for seventy years! For the next seventy years, amid disappointment, uncertainty, and discouragement, while His people were in exile, God promised peace, prosperity, hope, and a future for His people. He tells them, “I have a plan for you.”

If God had a plan for them while they were away from home, then He has a plan for us too. What is it? What could God be calling us to do during our college years? There are three main instructions: Build. Seek. Trust.

Build

⁵ "Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. ⁶ Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease.

God’s command would have been surprising to His people. God is essentially saying, “Make yourself at home.”

Can you imagine being in their shoes? They had been forced to relocate to a foreign land—enemy territory. Yet God tells them, “Build a house. Settle down. Plant a garden. Start a family.” In other words, get comfortable being uncomfortable. You’re going to be here for a while. Build.

If we were in that situation, we would have hoped God would say something like, “Don’t worry. Just wait a little longer. I’m going to get you out of here soon.” But God doesn’t say that. He doesn’t encourage wishful thinking. He doesn’t say, “Wait for seventy years.” No. He says, "Build right where you are." In other words, God is saying, “Don’t waste your time or the opportunity to do something meaningful.” God is saying that even in exile, you can build. Even in hardship, you can grow. Even in a season of uncertainty, there can be fruit.

This should be relevant for every single one of you. Most of you only have four years in college, and it can easily become a bubble. It is natural for you to just wait for “real life” to begin. It’s tempting to spiral into wishful thinking: “My life will be good once I graduate. Maybe my life will be better once I get my dream job. Once I move to the city I actually want to live in, then I’ll find my home, my family, and my friends. Once I get all of these things, then I’ll take my relationship with God more seriously.”

God is challenging that way of thinking. What if God’s plan for you is to be in a particular situation or circumstance for the next seventy years, beyond your college years? You may never find your purpose or what you’re passionate about. You may not find the one person who makes you feel special. Like God’s people in this passage, you may never find a home. So don’t wait for them. Be faithful right where God has placed you. Build.

But let me warn you. There are two ways we can get this wrong. First, we can fall into the trap of isolation. Because we are exiles, we may be tempted to withdraw and surround ourselves only with people who are familiar to us. But God has placed us among specific groups of people whom we are called to know, love, and care for. We are not called to isolate, but to intentionally build friendships with classmates, dormmates, and others who may believe, think, and live differently from us.

However, we can also fall into the trap of assimilation. Ultimately, we are citizens of God’s kingdom, which means His Word—not the values of our campuses—should shape the way we live. Yet in our desire to fit in, it is so easy to adopt the culture’s values, beliefs, and way of life and live like the citizens of this world rather than reflect God’s. That’s what it means to assimilate.

These are indeed traps. Isolation removes us from loving others, while assimilation removes us from loving God. To build the way God calls us to, we need to let God’s Word shape how we build over the next few years. Rather than just build your network, build genuine relationships. Rather than just build your résumé, build your character. Rather than just build your career, build yourself into a local church. Build.

Seek

⁷ Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile.

Notice what God does not say. He doesn’t say, “Seek your peace and your prosperity.” He says, “Seek the peace and prosperity of the city.” This command shows us that God’s plan is not for us to build only for ourselves. God has placed us in this city, on this specific campus, surrounded by specific people, to seek their peace and prosperity.

What a different way of viewing the city and our campuses. Many of us come to our campuses primarily for what they can give us. Think about why you came to Philadelphia. You came for an education, to prepare for a career, build connections, and create opportunities for your future. None of those are bad things. But if that’s all Philadelphia is to you—if you think God’s big plan for you is simply to give you your college degree—your view of God’s plan is way too small.

God’s plan for you is far greater than your degree, education, or individual success. God’s plan is for you to be part of a movement that helps shape this city's culture to reflect His kingdom. As exiles, we are not here simply to consume from our campuses. That’s what everyone else is doing (assimilation). But neither are we called to detach ourselves from them (isolation). God calls us to contribute to the flourishing of our campuses and the city around us.

Here’s where you can begin. Pray.

⁷…Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”

Think about how radical that command would have been to the people back then. God was commanding His people to pray for the very city that had carried them into exile. He was telling them to pray for their enemies.

For us, it can look like praying for the campus that we might be unfamiliar with. Praying for the professor you have a hard time with. Praying for the classmates you may not like. Praying for the roommate who frustrates you. Praying for people whose values and beliefs are completely different from yours. Praying even for the people you find difficult to love.

Why? Because when the city flourishes, God’s people flourish with it. As resident aliens, our well-being is directly connected to the city’s. Whether it’s four years or seventy years, when our campus and city do well, we get to share in that flourishing. So pray. Build. Seek the peace and prosperity of the city, and of your campus.

Now… It’s incredibly hard to obey these commands, isn’t it? As exiles, we live in an unstable world. There is fear of being left behind if we don’t follow the trends around us. So we feel the pressure to assimilate. Seeking what we think will give us peace comes effortlessly because we’re anxious about our future. Furthermore, as college students, it’s incredibly easy to seek our own prosperity when we’re thinking about student debt, finding a job, and becoming financially stable. So how can we live the kind of life God is calling us to live? How can we build and seek the good of others when we’re so worried about ourselves?

The only way we can live counterculturally is by trusting that God’s plans are better than ours. The only way we can live this sacrificially is if we trust that whatever God promises is sweeter than anything we can hold on to. What is His ultimate plan? What is His ultimate promise?

Trust

¹¹ “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

There is a tension in God’s promise here that we need to resolve. God’s people were going to remain in exile for seventy years. That means some of them would never see their homeland again. They would build houses, raise families, seek the good of Babylon, and eventually die in a place that was not their home. So how could God promise them prosperity, hope, and a future? Was He talking about the future of their children? Perhaps.

The word translated “prosper” comes from the Hebrew word shalom. Shalom means peace, wholeness, and flourishing. God is offering the ultimate peace. What is that peace?

In a later verse, God promises that one day He will bring His people home.

¹⁴ “I will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.”

Yet… we run into another tension. Historically, when we read the Bible, we learn that even returning to the homeland couldn’t give them the ultimate peace they needed. Throughout the Old Testament, God’s people still ran into problems. They still struggled with sin. They still experienced suffering. Even in the New Testament, we see that though the Jews were in Jerusalem, they were still under the Roman Empire. They were “home,” but they still lived like exiles. They still didn’t feel at home. Why? Because the land itself was never the solution to their exile.

When you trace the theme of exile throughout the Bible, you learn that exile was never just about being separated from a land. Ultimately, exile was about separation from God. From the beginning, sin has driven humanity away from God. Adam and Eve were exiled from Eden. Cain was exiled after killing Abel. Israel lived as exiles in Egypt and later as exiles wandered through the wilderness. Further, in Jeremiah, God’s people had once again been exiled to a foreign land.

The greatest rescue God’s people needed was not from Babylon. The restoration they needed was not simply a return to a land, but reconciliation to God Himself. Here’s what that means: our greatest need is not to return to wherever we call home. Our deepest need is not to be free from anxiety, to achieve financial security, or even to have all our circumstances work out the way we hoped. Our deepest need is to be reconciled to God. To be brought near God’s presence again.

This is what God meant when He promised His people hope and a future… a peace that would last well beyond their lives. His plan all along was to reconcile us to Himself. But how?

Centuries later, God came down from heaven and took on flesh to give His people the peace, the shalom, He had promised. Jesus came into our world and lived among us. Yet He didn’t isolate Himself from the poor and the marginalized by clinging to the religious elites. In fact, some of His harshest words were directed toward the religious leaders. But neither did He assimilate to the culture around Him. He never sinned, yet Jesus lived among sinners, loved sinners, and welcomed sinners—all to save sinners. Yet this loving Savior had no home. Jesus once said, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head” (Matt. 8:20). In other words, Jesus Himself had no place to call home.

Why? Because Jesus left His home in heaven above to seek the peace and prosperity of sinners. He sought to heal the sick, feed the hungry, raise the dead, and embrace the outcast. Yet the very people He came to save rejected Him and sought to crucify Him. And they succeeded…

On the way to the cross, Jesus was exiled from Jerusalem and crucified outside the city. To be outside the city meant a loss of identity, peace, and security. To be crucified outside the city meant He truly had no place to call home. He was rejected and cast out.

On the cross, Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He was crying because he had become the ultimate exile. He was forsaken by the Father… so that exiles like us could be reconciled to God and find a new home in His presence. He was forsaken by the Father, so that we may have access to God as our Father.

On the cross, Jesus prayed for the very people crucifying Him: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing (Luke 23:34).” Look at the love of Christ. Even as He suffered, He was still seeking the good of His enemies. He sought our peace at the cost of His own. What a beautiful display of His grace!

How could we look at a love like that and remain untrusting of His plan and promises? If God was willing to give us His own Son, how can we think He is withholding what is truly good for us (Rom. 8:31-32)? What more could God give us? There is nothing greater than Christ Himself.

We may not always understand His plan. His plan may look nothing like ours. In fact, His plan may even sound crazy. But then again, so did the cross. The cross was God’s plan A. There was no other plan from the beginning. Look at God’s redemptive plan to give His own Son for us. Look at Christ, who faithfully carried out that plan even when it cost Him His life.

If God loved us like this while we were His enemies, then His love must reshape how we live as exiles today, now that we are His children. We don’t build, seek, or trust to earn our way home. We do these things because, in Christ, we already have a home.

So exiles… build. Don’t spend college waiting for your “real” life to begin. Build yourself into a local church. Commit to worshiping God every Sunday. We need it. Be intentional about building relationships with your fellow students. Invite others into the church.

Resident aliens… seek. Instead of asking what your campus or this city can do for you, seek what you can do for your campus and for this city. Pray. Love your classmates. Serve your neighbors. Seek the peace and prosperity of the city.

God’s people… trust. Some of you may never completely feel at home during college and beyond. Yet that’s one of the reasons Crosswalk College Fellowship exists—to be a home away from home. But even this community can never be our ultimate home. Until Christ returns and makes all things new, we have Christ and His promise to cling to.

So, my dear friends, let’s build, seek, and trust together until Christ brings us home.