Tested Right After the Call

In 2019, Keisha Morgan graduated top of her class from Howard University's school of education. Her professors praised her. Her family celebrated. She had the diploma, the honors, the calling confirmed. Two weeks later, she walked into her first classroom at a Title I school in Southeast D.C. — thirty-two seventh graders, a broken projector, no curriculum binder, and a student who told her on day one, "You won't last till Christmas."

That wilderness semester nearly broke her. She cried in her car during lunch. She questioned whether she had heard her calling correctly. Everything that had been affirmed at graduation was now under siege in a fluorescent-lit classroom that smelled like industrial cleaner.

But Keisha stayed. Not because the wilderness got easier, but because the voice that spoke over her at graduation — "You are ready, you belong here" — was more real than the chaos testing it.

Mark tells us that the moment the heavens opened over Jesus at His baptism, the moment the voice of the Almighty declared, "You are my beloved Son," the Spirit drove Him straight into the wilderness. Not after a victory lap. Not after a retreat. Immediately.

The pattern Christ sets is unmistakable: identity confirmed, then identity tested. If you have recently heard God speak something true over your life and now find yourself in a wilderness that seems to contradict every word of it — take heart. The wilderness does not cancel the calling. It confirms you heard it right.