We don’t take our parents with us when we go off to college or university—we leave them at home. We’re thankful for their support and prayers, but in most cases we’re eager to be off by ourselves as newly established adults.

Whether we’re staying local or going far away, the college transition is momentous—a huge rite of passage. All that we are and all that we will become is now defined by our personal choices.

At age 18, I crunched my stuff into a few suitcases and crossed an ocean to college. I was so excited that I forgot to pray. I let God fade. There were people to meet, things to arrange, friends to make, a life to establish, an independence to express.

Within weeks, I found that while college was exciting, it was also demanding. Along with fun and good times were disappointments, complications, pressures. There were mistakes to be made, failures to be experienced. There were too many decisions. There was not enough time to do what I was expected to do. And there were no family members or long-established friends to provide rescue and relief. I was surrounded by people, but this made lonely times more intense.

By the end of my first term, I realised I needed more than a background God. I needed a God with full presence. I began to seek God as a Parent and Friend with whom I could establish a relationship of knowing and loving, asking and receiving. I knew that seeking God wouldn’t make my challenges disappear, but it would give me standing to deal with my challenges. I read this promise in my Bible: “Those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.” Psalm 34:10.

The Spirit of God led me to a decision that seemed crazy. I would get up no later than 5 am, Monday through Friday, and spend a full hour with God, no matter what. I would study my Bible, and I would pray. Was it easy? No! Did it make a difference? Enormously.

The days became brighter, the challenges more tolerable. Every evening, I would stroll down by the river. It was a prayer walk. I would take any frustrations or difficulties from the day and lay them on Jesus. And I’d praise him for the joys—which were many.

I would see another student, a young man, standing under a tree for a long time most evenings. His head was always bowed. I couldn’t see angels, but I could sense them. This student was the quietest boy in the dorm. I didn’t know his name. But I knew he and God were at peace.

One evening, on the return part of my stroll, the boy was no longer standing by the tree. At the dorm, ambulance lights flashed. The one whose name I didn’t know had collapsed and died. I may have been the last to see him alive. Later, I learned he carried a secret—a congenital heart defect that destined his life to be short. I was deeply affected. His life and death confirmed that I should keep on making God an intimate part of my college experience.

Final exams were usually two to three intense hours—this was a traditional system that we concluded was based on torture! In the exam room, I would bow my head and spend the first ten minutes in prayer. “God, this time is yours. You know the challenge. Bring to my mind the things I have learned. As for the things I haven’t learned, how about a miracle? May the same blessing be given to my fellow students. . . .”

I saw miracles in one exam after another. The Spirit of God seemed to fill the room and transform torture into blessing.

Even with its joys and miracles, college for me was in many ways a struggle. I was glad to graduate into the next chapter of my life.

For your college experience and every challenge you face, I recommend intimacy with God. There is no substitute. There is no more powerful way to establish your identity and to define your life as an adult and as a believer in God.

This article first appeared in modified form in Mid-America Outlook, September 2007. Copyright © 2009 by Ed Gallagher (South Pacific edition). / Scripture quotations taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission.