When You and Your Student Disagree on a Major Running the Race that God Sets Before Them

Before we address the disagreement about your student's degree program, let's start with a pulse check of how we think, believe, and act. Philippians 4:8-9 calls these parts of our lives the whatsoevers. Breathe it...Believe it...Live it...Do it...Speak it.

May "whatsoever" be the steady cadence of our beating hearts!

My friends, we are privileged to journey together with our students as they travel through God’s story – in their own lives. As a parent to two now grown children who have graduated, here are a couple of things that I know to be true. My children are different from each other, and while they each reflect a little bit of me and a little bit of their father, they are every bit all of who they are in Jesus Christ. They are their own person with a multi-leveled, many-dimensioned story because the author of their lives is God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. I also know that every facet of our children’s lives is known and available to God, if we don’t in some way hinder the blessing and provision that He intends for them as an adult.

If that last statement wasn’t the direction you thought that I was going…be encouraged! Hold on and read with me. I want for you the most amazing, healthy, full partnership with your now grown-up child that you can have, and to get there, we (parents and guardians) must be sure we aren’t getting in God’s way.

Do you believe that God is in control, that He is sovereign? Yes! Genesis 1:1. Psalm 121. John 1:1-3. He is the same, unchanging, faithful Father while your student is here at Liberty. He has them in His hands, and there’s no better place to be.

Do you believe God’s word that what He begins, He will finish? That He will use everything in your student’s life for good and for His glory? Yes! Psalm 33:4. Psalm 139. Everything includes childhood interests, playing, helping others, organizing, creating, and dreaming…skills, interests, subjects, life events, and their heart’s passions.

Double-check your heartbeat. Are you allowing them to run the race that God has set before them, or are you forcing them to run a race that you have envisioned for them? Have you released them to the Lord to allow them to grow into the adult that He can see?

If your student is studying a degree program that you chose for them because the degree promises to lead to a job that provides for them but they haven’t any interest, skill, passion, or God-given motivation for pursuing a life in that vocation, they will not be as successful or as joyful as they may be by pursuing what God has called them to do. If this is where you and your student are right now, in the middle of a tug-of-war over their degree program and the vocation they see God calling them, or their life in general, then put a pause on the conversation.

Breathe. Pray. Ask yourself what you saw them enjoying as a child. Is there a skill, a talent, and a passion that you have misplaced into a job, or person, that you want them to want? Be honest. Be quiet with the Lord and allow him to massage your heart’s rhythm back into a steady cadence to “whatsoever” well (Phil. 4:8-9).

When you have done that, go and check in with your student. You might need to start with an apology; explain where you have been, and that you are open to God’s direction and provision in their lives. Be a blessing to them.

Give them permission to follow God’s heart and to pursue His plans.

May you and your student discover a greater level of fellowship and peace in new conversations. May your student find themselves to be in the sweetest place they could ever be – in the center of God’s will.