When God Makes a Way

Anna Grace Sessions
Pastoral Ministry Major, Class of 2027

Posted on March 2, 2026

In seventh grade, sitting among thousands of students at MOTION Student Conference, Anna Grace Sessions sensed something that would shape the rest of her life. She received what she would later describe as an open vision. It was not a detailed blueprint or a specific job title, but a single phrase repeating in her spirit.

“Eternal impact. Eternity, eternity, eternity. That was all I could hear,” Anna Grace remembers. “I’ve always had an awareness of God, but this was the first time it was clear. Eternal impact is for my life, not just for my family.”

From that moment forward, Highlands College became one of two real possibilities for her future. After 10 years of devotion to volleyball and with an athletic scholarship that would allow her to attend College for free, Anna Grace wrestled with God about her future. Was she going to take volleyball seriously, or was she meant to pursue ministry?

“I loved church. I was at church every time the doors were open. If my parents were going to ground me, it would have to be by taking church away! But the volleyball scholarship felt like the Lord’s hand, like it was everything that I ever needed,” she said.

Ministry was not foreign to Anna Grace. Her grandfather was a pastor, and she had grown up in church around Spirit-led believers. Her family found Church of the Highlands when she was in second grade, and she gave her life to Jesus in Highlands Kids, growing up in every environment the church offered. But in 2008, when the stock market collapsed, her family, like many others, was struck with hardship.

“We went from everything to nothing,” she explains. The years that followed required rebuilding. Her sister left college and moved home. One brother paid his own way through school. Another never had the opportunity to attend. For Anna Grace, the practical reality was straightforward. If she declined the athletic scholarship, she would have to fund her education herself.

So, she made a decision that required both faith and surrender. She chose not to apply anywhere else.

“I knew God was going to make a way, and I trusted that He would,” Anna Grace shared.

That pathway to choose Highlands College came through an Endowed Student Scholarship, a full-tuition scholarship for all four years of her degree. When she learned she had received the scholarship, it was not simply a financial update about tuition. It was provision for her calling and a weight lifted from her family’s shoulders.

“I know my parents would’ve done anything to get me here,” she says. “Watching them work and sacrifice my whole life, and knowing that that burden was taken off of them by the scholarship I was given, I cry about that. It means everything.”

Now a junior majoring in Pastoral Ministry with a minor in Business Administration, Anna Grace has been able to focus entirely on God’s mission without the distraction of financial strain.

“Being able to go to class and not be distracted by the burden of finances and fully focus on learning the content has been such a blessing. I feel like I’ve been given everything to do my best,” Anna Grace explained.

On the days that Highlands College is hard, the gift of the scholarship has remained grounding. “Somebody believes in me. Somebody believed in me enough to send me here,” she shared. “I’m grounded in the reality that God gave me the gift to be here for four years.”

Anna Grace has flourished. She’s been holistically trained in competence, character, and spiritual maturity to live a life of eternal impact after Highlands College. She has participated in Young Communicator Sunday, preaching her own, personally-crafted message before a live and virtual audience at Church of the Highlands, one of the largest churches in America. She has served as a Resident Assistant, learning what it means to pastor her peers with care and responsibility. She has helped shape the student experience by working with the Rec and Fit Team under the Character Formation Pillar. She has shadowed Church of the Highlands Teammates at the Grants Mill campus and has publicly honored guests like Chancellor Chris Hodges at Highlands College Chapel pre-service.

Yet, beyond the highlights, the most significant work in Anna Grace’s life has been internal.

“Being at Highlands College, it’s like God put me on this spiritual surgery table and began to remove the things that didn’t need to be there and shape and develop me into what He wanted,” she says.

For Anna Grace, eternal impact is no longer an abstract phrase from seventh grade, but the reality of her life at America’s Ministry Leadership University, made possible by donors who believed in her calling.

“As a young leader, you’re begging for people to believe in you. Even as a seventh grader, I questioned, ‘Are people going to believe I’m called?’ To think that strangers who have never seen my face believe in the vision of this College and in my generation enough to give toward my education, it’s humbling, and it means the world.”

Anna Grace at The View, meeting her donors for the first time during the Spring Endowed Student Scholarship event of 2026.

Anna Grace hopes to honor this investment by continuing to partner with God in building His Kingdom. This spring, she will travel to Lima, Peru, on a Cross-Cultural Ministry Trip, fulfilling a specific dream she had as a child that she would one day do missions in Lima. She is continuing to explore nonprofit and missions opportunities, discerning how her pastoral and business training intersect in service to God’s Kingdom.

“I hope this investment in me multiplies,” she says. “To every person who has so faithfully given, your generosity is being multiplied not only in my life, but in the lives of so many students, and the impact doesn’t just end with us.”

Anna Grace Sessions met her Endowed Student Scholarship donors for the first time this year. When reflecting on the event, she expressed the deepest gratitude. “Their generosity made a way for me to stay. I’m forever marked by what God has done in me because of that. In so many ways, this opportunity did save my life.”

Her story is not simply about provision but the result of God making a way. When barriers were removed, it became an opportunity for obedience. Because of the Endowed Student Scholarship, Anna Grace Sessions did not have to choose between practicality and purpose. She was free to say yes. And that yes is being formed into a life committed to fulfilling the Great Commission.

To learn more about supporting students through scholarship, please email campaign@highlandscollege.edu.