Making Your Faith Authentic
I’d only been a Christian for a few years when I decided to go to YWAMs (Youth With A Mission) Discipleship Training School. The commitment included living at their facility during three months of intensive teaching followed by two months on the mission field. Everyone who lived there helped maintain the facility, and my daily work assignment was to vacuum the dining hall, sweep the breezeway and clean the public restrooms. I have to tell you I was not happy about this assignment! Cleaning is one of my least favorite things to do, and public toilets? Ick! My teenage roommate complained about having to be in the office because she couldn’t type and hated office work. I was 30 and had lots of office experience and that would have been an ideal fit for me. I thought, these people have things all wrong, but I plugged away at the job I was given.
One day as I was on my knees in the bathroom scrubbing a toilet, it occurred to me that this lowly job could be a good match for foot washing in Jesus’ time. The lowliest of servants had to wash the feet of his master’s guests, feet that had been tromping down dusty roads, through cattle dung and other muck. And Jesus had done this voluntarily. No one would have ever asked Him to or expected Him to. He was the guest, not the servant. But He made Himself a servant by washing the feet of His disciples, teaching them what it meant to truly follow Him. Through this thought process, I realized that by scrubbing public toilets willingly, I could learn to be like Jesus in some small way. I could do one of the lowliest jobs of our time and relate to Jesus on a different level. With a change in attitude my lowly job helped me to understand humility and serving, and gave me a new relationship with Jesus. It is similar to feeling a connection with someone because you share a common interest or experience.
I have known the heartache of betrayal by someone I thought was on my side through life. This enabled me to relate to Jesus on an emotional level I had not experienced before. I have known the difficulty of financial loss and struggling to get by. Through this I have learned dependence on Him for my very basic needs. I have not had to live with chronic physical pain as I know some people do. They can relate to Jesus on a level I have not. He knows exactly what they are going through and is teaching them something through the very personal relationship they share. I have not experienced the loss of a loved one too young to die, but Jesus has and he provides a special comfort to those who have also experienced that depth of sorrow.
We all experience difficulties in life, some similar and some different than others experience. Whatever our circumstance, we can allow it to draw us closer to Jesus. When we experience something difficult, we are relating to Jesus in a new way and now share a common bond with Him and a more intimate relationship.
The one thing that has most helped me to endure my personal difficulties is thankfulness. Thankfulness absolutely changes everything. A grateful heart, no matter the circumstances, opens us to a deeper relationship with Jesus and allows Him to work in us as well as our circumstances to change either one, as He chooses. Gratitude clears a path to Jesus and opens the door to His goodness. Grumbling and complaining keeps us in the wilderness of confusion just as it did the Israelites.
Some insist they cannot be thankful for certain things, but I believe we are to be thankful for the most difficult, painful, hard to understand things we go through because thankfulness is the very thing that brings healing, brings understanding, and brings us closer to our Lord. Jesus can do amazing things through our thankfulness! It is through accepting our difficulties by being thankful for them that we are able to come to a deeper relationship with Jesus. Difficulties test our faith and make it real. It is difficulty, endured with a thankful heart, that leads us to authentic faith.