Today, I want to share a little about how the goodness of God has carried me this far.
Four years ago, I left home and began a new chapter of my life in Newcastle, NSW. The journey hasn’t always been easy. There have been challenges, uncertainties, and moments when I felt completely out of my depth. Yet through it all, I have been constantly reminded that God has never left my side.
Looking back, I can clearly see His hand in every season. He answered prayers in His perfect timing, provided for my needs when I didn’t know where help would come from, and placed the right people in my life exactly when I needed them. There were also times when He removed people, teaching me lessons I could only learn through change and growth.
In every heartbreak, He was there.
In every disappointment, He remained faithful.
And in my lowest moments, He was closer than ever.
“The LORD is close to the brokenhearted; he rescues those whose spirits are crushed.”
Psalm 34:18 NLT
Over the past few weeks, God has been doing something profound in my heart. Since the day I encountered Him, I genuinely believed that my life was all about Him. I loved serving Him and wanted to honor Him with my gifts and talents. But recently, He has been gently revealing something I hadn’t fully seen before.
Without realizing it, I was still building plans around myself.
I thought I had surrendered everything, yet many of my dreams and expectations were still shaped by what I wanted my life to look like. I was focused on serving God, but God wasn’t simply after my ministries, my talents, or my abilities. He wanted something deeper.
He wanted my whole heart.
As someone who naturally loves planning, organizing, and preparing for the future, I’ve always prayed for God to give me the right desires and guide my steps. (Philippians 2:13)
“For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.”
Phillipians 2:13 NLT
But like many young adults trying to figure out life, I didn’t always recognize how tightly I was holding onto my own plans.
The future I imagined seemed good to me. The visa, sponsorship, and work opportunities I prayed for felt like the answers I needed. Yet God, in His wisdom, led me in a different direction. For weeks, those things were taken away, leaving me with nothing to do but wait. Suddenly, I found myself on an uncertain bridging visa, without work rights, and with a little mistake, and I could lose my sponsorship. I was left with nothing but to wait.
It’s not where I expected to be.
It’s not comfortable.
And if I’m honest, it’s not easy.
But this season is teaching me something valuable: faith is not trusting God only when we can see the next step. Faith is trusting Him even when the path ahead is unclear.
God is teaching me to surrender more deeply than ever before. To release my timelines, my expectations, and my carefully crafted plans. To trust that His ways are higher than mine, and that His purpose is greater than anything I could design for myself.
How does it feel when life doesn’t go according to your plan, when you lose something you value the most? Do you feel frustrated? Anxious? Hopeless? Maybe even angry at God? That’s exactly how I felt. And if that’s where you are today, I want you to know that it’s okay to feel that way. For the first few weeks of not being able to work and being forced into a season of waiting, I felt an overwhelming heaviness. My thoughts consumed me. I couldn’t stop overthinking. Anxiety crept in. I feared the unknown, and my mind constantly replayed worst-case scenarios. I felt like I was sinking. But looking back now, I realize that I needed to walk through those emotions. In that place of weakness, I was reminded that Jesus Himself experienced human suffering and temptation when He walked on earth. He understands our fears, our disappointments, and our struggles.
“Since he himself has gone through suffering and testing, he is able to help us when we are being tested.”
Hebrews 2:18 NLT
While I don’t know exactly what comes next, days and weeks passed by, having nothing made me remember who walks with me. The same God who has been faithful for the last four years here in Australia and for more years of my life will be faithful in this season, too. The same God who provided before will provide again. The same God who carried me through heartbreak, uncertainty, and change is still writing my story. And perhaps that’s the beauty of following Him: we don’t need to know every detail of the journey when we know the One leading the way. I choose to wait with hope. I choose to trust with confidence. And I choose to believe that God’s goodness is not only behind me—it is also before me.
Eventually, I came to a place of acceptance. I told myself that perhaps my journey in Australia was coming to an end. Maybe this door was closing. For weeks, God seemed quiet in my waiting, while my mind was incredibly loud. Doubts were loud. Worries were loud. Fear was loud. I felt discouraged. Finally, I surrendered my heart before God and prayed:
“Lord, if these opportunities are not for me, if You are closing this door, I will still love You. I will still trust You. I still believe that You have good plans and a future for me, just as You promised.” (Jeremiah 29:11)
“For I know the plans I have for you,” says the LORD. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.”
Jeremiah 29:11 NLT
And somehow, everything began to change. Not because my circumstances immediately improved. But because my heart did. Despite the uncertainty, I continued to wait. Every day felt like a battle between my heart and my mind. My mind understood the reality of my situation. My visa situation had become complicated, and it seemed possible that my time in Australia was ending. But deep within me, there was a quiet confidence that refused to disappear. I knew that no matter how difficult my situation looked, God is bigger than all things. He has overcome the world.
“I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.”
John 16:33 NLT
Every day, I prayed and recited Psalms 23 and 91 over myself. Whenever I felt hope slipping away, I would talk to myself: “God will work all things together for good. For my good. Because He is good.” In the middle of the chaos, I sensed that God was doing something deeper than solving a visa problem.
He was shaping a testimony.
I knew that one day I would share this story—not to highlight my strength, but to give glory to Him.
Three Lessons I’ve Learned in This Faith Journey
1. God Will Send the Right People in Every Season
One of God’s greatest gifts during this season was the people He placed around me. When I couldn’t speak life over myself, my church family did. When my faith felt weak, others prayed for me. When my perspective became clouded, God used faithful friends to encourage, challenge, and correct me in love.
Through this season, I learned the importance of surrounding yourself with people who point you back to Jesus.
“As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend.”
Proverbs 27:17 NLT
My journey of faith hasn’t always been easy. There were seasons when I experienced hurt, disappointment, and heartbreak within ministry. I struggled to connect with people and found myself building walls around my heart.
But God was patient with me.
He healed wounds I carried for years. He taught me how to forgive. He showed me His grace. And little by little, He restored the passion that first led me to follow Him. This waiting season revealed something I hadn’t noticed before—I had become guarded. God wasn’t only working on my circumstances; He was working on my heart.
By the third week of waiting, I found myself reaching out to people. I went for walks, shared coffees, and had honest conversations. For the first time in a long time, I felt willing to let people see my heart. The waiting gave me the courage to reconnect.
2. Let Trouble Grow Your Faith
While I was in a season of waiting, God found ways to meet me right where I was.
I was invited to a one-day conference on the Central Coast, and during one of the sessions, a pastor spoke about trials, difficulties, and how we respond when life gets hard. As I listened, I started reflecting deeply on my own reactions to God in those moments.
If I’m honest, it has always been easier for me to complain than to pause and trust. It was easier to question than to surrender.
Then the pastor said something that stayed with me:
“When distractions and hard situations come, sit there, feel it, and don’t argue.”
In that moment, something shifted in me. I realised that maybe, in the middle of the storm, God wasn’t asking me to fix everything or figure everything out—maybe He was simply asking me to sit still and trust Him.
This reminded me of James 1:2–4 (NLT)—that when troubles come, we are to consider them an opportunity for great joy, because the testing of our faith produces endurance, and that endurance has the power to make us mature and complete.
Something inside me began to stir.
If this really was God testing my faith, I could feel a fire starting to burn within my heart. And instead of resisting it, I chose to let it burn. I chose to let my faith grow.
That day, I walked out of the conference with a quiet but deep joy in my heart.
3. Celebrate Small Things in the Waiting
While I am writing this, I thought of you, and I felt so blessed that I get the privilege to write, as it felt like it is meant for you.
There were moments in this journey when I doubted myself—and even questioned if Jesus was truly my firm foundation. In my loudest thoughts, lowest and darkest days, when I couldn’t seem to hear God clearly, a friend encouraged me to write down ten small things I was grateful for each day. After five days, I would have fifty reminders of God’s goodness.
At first, it felt simple. But by the third day, something changed in me. I couldn’t even explain the joy that started rising in my heart.
As I kept drawing closer to God, I began to hear Him more clearly again. It wasn’t always easy to focus on the good when heavy waves were pulling at my mind, but even then, my faith held onto the smallest hope that God was still speaking in my suffering.
I’ve learned that promises require faith. And sometimes God allows us to be led into seasons that stretch us deeply—but in that stretching, He draws us into a greater hunger to know Him.
God’s discipline is not always easy.
“As you endure this divine discipline, remember that God is treating you as his own children. Whoever heard of a child who is never disciplined by its father?”
Hebrews 12:7 (NLT)
In that season, I was faced with two choices:
Will I lean closer into God, after all the years He has never failed me?
Or will I walk away from God because everything feels uncertain, and I feel so lost?
I chose to lean in.
With tired hands, I held on tighter to God—and to the people He placed around me.
“So take a new grip with your tired hands and strengthen your weak knees… Mark out a straight path for your feet so that those who are weak and lame will not fall but become strong.”
Hebrews 12:12–13 (NLT)
After five weeks, my visa was lodged, my sponsorship and nomination as an international worker were approved, and my bridging visa was granted with work rights, and I was able to return to work this Monday.
I couldn’t help but feel my heart burning with gratitude. Words can hardly describe how thankful I am to God—not only for opening doors, but for deepening my faith and strengthening my heart in ways I didn’t expect.
Life has a way of shaping us through trials and challenges, and those moments can leave us changed in one of two ways—stronger or more discouraged. The direction we take often comes down to the choices we make along the journey.
When we choose to lean into God and nurture our relationship with Him through faith, even in uncertain seasons, we discover a quiet strength growing within us. Faith is not meant to avoid challenges, but to be refined through them. The faith that can’t be tested is a faith that can’t be trusted.
“In his kindness God called you to share in his eternal glory by means of Christ Jesus. So after you have suffered a little while, he will restore, support, and strengthen you, and he will place you on a firm foundation.”
1 Peter 5:10 (NLT)