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As a rising senior at Rutgers University in New Jersey, I believe everything that’s happened during college, good and bad, has happened for a reason. God has never made a mistake. 

“Can my faith survive college?”

Whether or not you’ve said this out loud, it’s a question a lot of future college freshmen are asking this month as they think about leaving home for the first time and stepping onto campus in a few short weeks. 

It was a simple enough question. “Would you like me to buy you one?” The thing in question was an official Urbana 12 T-shirt. It would be a keepsake for me from what had so far been an amazing experience in a foreign land at a great conference. 

I look like a pretty typical Christian girl. I grew up in a Christian family like most of my friends involved in campus ministries. My parents were missionaries when I was younger. I’m pretty sure I held the Sunday school record for flipping to the correct book of the Bible the fastest. And by the time I began college I had already been on two mission trips.

This week at the blog, just over six months since close to 16,000 of us gathered in St. Louis, we’re telling stories from Urbana 12.

Today we celebrate freedom as a nation. But how are we to view freedom as Christians?

God wants you to have a vacation. Seriously. Let me explain: Yes, God wants you to work hard and be faithful in school, at work, and in all of your responsibilities, whatever they might be.

God’s wrath is troubling. God seems to choose some people … and not others. He gracefully invites and intensely disciplines. The God of the Bible—our Father—is accessible … and terrifying. Ten years ago this month, I became a father. 

Remember your commitment to keep growing in faith over the summer? ���� Press happens to have some great new resources to help you do just that: the LifeGuide in Depth Series.

If your life is like mine was, summer means leaving the support of your ���� fellowship and church and living in the spiritual desert of your home environment. Without even a strong church tie at home, I spent my first two summers caught in a harmful cycle of sin, guilt, and little spiritual growth.