How God Helped Me In My Studies
By Nic
Hello! My name is Nic, and I recently graduated from the Singapore Management University’s School of Social Sciences. Because God was with me throughout my journey, I have had the blessing of graduating on the dean’s list. And today, I hope to share with everyone how God helped me in my studies, and how faith can play a part in your studies or work as well.
There was one semester where I found myself juggling a multitude of things — school, church, family issues, internship hunting, and more. I had so many commitments, endless deadlines, terrible project mates, and absolutely no time to pray or do anything spiritual. This left me feeling really suffocated, and I felt like I was just living to survive each week. One module, in particular, was giving me a lot of stress as I had a group presentation, group essay, and an individual essay all due in the same week. Thinking that the individual essay would be easier, I left it for the last.
To my horror, when I finally sat down to read the individual assignment brief, I was so stunned to the point that I didn’t even know how to begin. With less than a week to go, I had to write an academic reflective essay on two paintings in the National Gallery, revolving around Asian identity. Despite going to the National Gallery at least five times hoping inspiration would strike me, I was still at a loss about what topic to choose.
However, the sermon for that week enlightened me on how I could resolve my predicament. The sermon title was: “Do the spiritual work first, then the physical work.”
The next day, I took a minute to pray the moment once I got to the museum. After I prayed, I felt a strong and inexplicable impulse in my heart which drew my eyes towards two particular paintings. At first thought, I did not want to use one of the paintings as there wasn’t much information provided on it. But at that point, I entrusted my decision to God and I believed that if God led me to this painting, then it must be because this painting would be what I needed for me to write my essay.
Before I started writing my essay, I took action according to the sermon again by praying to God to help me find information quickly, to let me realise what He wanted me to learn through this essay, and for the process of writing this essay to be fun. God answered my prayers exactly. I managed to find information related to that painting, and I genuinely had a lot of fun in the process as well. While writing the essay, I gained realisations on my identity, who I am, and how my identity came to be. Ultimately, I managed to obtain an A+ for this essay, for which I was really shocked by because this was a professor who was known for his strict grading. This was on top of the fact that I had never gotten an A+ for an essay before.
Through these experiences in my university journey, I know that God is definitely working in my life. The excellent results I have attained, especially when all odds seemed to be against me, can only be attributed to God and the inspiration I have received from the Holy Trinity after praying. I have realised that praying before starting any studying activity, whether it is assignments, group meetings or revision, has been essential in helping me gain inspiration on how to do my school work, and this has enabled me to do well consistently. I encourage everyone who is reading this to seek God’s counsel in the work that you do in the world, and see the miracles which you can achieve together with God’s help!