Photos by Ralph Freso / Slideshow / Livestream
Behind the richness of the sweet season filled with weekly worship and campus events lurk the struggles of college life.
They could be academic struggles, financial woes or heartbreak.
But Pastor Noe Garcia of North Phoenix Baptist Church told Grand Canyon University students at Monday Chapel that God is powerful enough to show that what you perceive as rejection is actually redirection.
“And I promise you can't see it now, but one day, when you're in my seat, you will see God's sovereign hand and the things that you saw as rejection, it's God's sovereignty,” Garcia told the audience at Global Credit Union Arena.
“… As long as God is in the equation of your life, no matter what that struggle is, God can use that struggle as part of your story for His glory.”
Garcia disclosed that more than half of college students are struggling with “something so significant in their life” that is leading them to depression and anxiety to the point they feel like they will not recover.
The “pocket of depression” reaches a depth where you feel dark in your soul or Scripture does not seem to speak to you. “You feel so incredibly spiritually numb that you're questioning maybe God's existence, or God's plan and purpose for your life,” Garcia adds.
But there are examples that rejection leads to redirection. Garcia uses the story of Jephthah in Judges 11:1-3 as an example. Jephthah is considered a hero of faith - a 2025-26 Monday Chapel theme - because of his bravery and eventual willingness to trust God despite making a fatal deal with Him.
Jephthah was the son of a prostitute stemming from his father Gilead’s affair, and Gilead’s other sons produced by Gilead’s wife drove him out of the family and cut him off from any inheritance.
“The truth is, if you've ever been rejected to incapacity, you recognize the trauma and pain that this rejection can cause you, and what it causes inside of your soul and how you view yourself right there now becomes a value issue,” Garcia said.
The deep pain, unbeknownst to Jephthah, actually prepared him for his purpose. He left his brothers to live in Tob, where a group of “worthless fellows” who also were broken and rejected start to follow him.
Jephthah started to wonder if God left him and does not care about him, especially because of his brokenness and being asked to lead people in a similar plight against the Ammonites.
But, “our understanding of who God is will be a lifelong pursuit,” Garcia said. “You will never, ever come to the place in your life, ever where we can say, ‘I figured God out.’ Our understanding of who God is often developed through our experiences in life. When you experience victory in life, you will get a little better understanding of who God is and how kind He is to allow you to experience victory.
“When you experience depression and brokenness and you're in the valley for a long time, it's often in the valley that you get to really know who God is. In the heart of God, your life experiences will help us to understand God.”
But a desperate Jephthah, seeking a victory over the Ammonites at all costs, makes a deal with God that he would sacrifice the first person who comes out of his house in exchange for victory.
That person turned out to be his lone daughter.
“(Jephthah) didn't understand God that he thought he had to bargain with God in order to experience victory,” said Garcia, who also fessed up to his own mistakes.
During his athletic days at a Christian university, Garcia said he would pray that he would not sin on Fridays if God would help him perform well on Saturdays.
“Stupid, as if God didn't know I wasn't going to follow through,” Garcia said.
“… I bargained with God because I didn't understand the heart of God. But I will tell you how difficult it is to understand the heart of God and perceive who God is when we have come from broken lifestyles, we have a life that's filled with struggles and sin, as we all do in this room.
“It is very difficult to comprehend God's love when we're constantly looking at God through the lens of our own failures.”
Garcia admitted he, like Jephthah, had doubts about God and felt angry and depressed during his college years. He went through nearly two years of “complete brokenness.”
“Growth often comes when you when your soul feels like it's suffering, and you feel like nothing that's like God completely empties your soul of any self-sufficiency,” Garcia said. “And He allows you to get to the bottom of the barrel where you recognize ‘I need You.’
“And I'm not saying it because it's the right thing to say. I'm saying it because ‘I need You. My soul is empty. God, I need You.’ “
Next Chapel speaker: Jamie Rasmussen, Scottsdale Bible Church, 11 a.m. Monday, Global Credit Union Arena
GCU senior writer Mark Gonzales can be reached at [email protected]
***
Related content
GCU News: Chapel speaker: 'Faith is believing God'
GCU News: It's time to forgive, Noe Garcia emphasizes at Chapel
