I was punched, hit, kicked, screamed at, threatened, bit -and that was just the first week on the job! After the first few days when I was told "you pick it up" by a 3 and 6 year old (after I had asked them to pick up their granola bar wrapper off the floor).
I wanted to quit.
I wanted to give up.
I had never in my life been so disrespected by children.
The problem was that God had given me a specific dream about this family and in that dream I was meant to help them for a set amount of time. So armed with this direction from the Lord, I'd like to say that I was feeling like God's warrior, ready to take on any challenge but I wasn't.
I was looking for a loophole.
I was totally about to pull a "Jonah" -you know, like Jonah and the whale from the Bible in where God asked Jonah to go somewhere and instead Jonah ran the other way?
I was asking God, "Are you sure you want me to stay in this job? It feels wrong. It feels like a mistake. You can't be asking me to endure this type of behavior from kids after all I've gone through! Really God?? Really?"
But it didn't really matter why God sent me there, what mattered to God was my staying power. Could I stay committed in the face of adversity? Did I have staying power for this difficult situation? I honestly didn't know.
So I dug my heels in and decided that I was going to remain faithful to where God had called me no matter how hard things got. I reminded myself that I am working for the Lord and that my goal is to one day hear "Well done, good and faithful servant". (I knew I definitely didn't want to show up at the pearly gates with a bunch of lame excuses why I couldn't obey him in this)
Adversity is defined by Merriam-Webster as: a state or instance of serious or continued difficulty or misfortune
I'd love to tell you that things improved over time, but they didn't. No matter how much I prayed, no matter how much I worshipped, or poured out love for these kids nothing had changed in their attitudes.
But you see, there was a change happening; it was in me. I was growing in this challenging environment. I was learning how to follow Christ when faced with a difficult situation that I could have bailed on right from the start. -aren't those the most challenging of all, the ones that have an easy out?
Many believers are giving up their faith in Jesus because of adversity. They find themselves in a challenging scenario and instead of digging in, they find the easy way out.
I'm talking about...
Giving up when tired of fighting that temptation
Going the direction that the world is pulling them in
Hiding in the darkness because God hadn't come through like they thought
It was God's word to me that guided me to that job. It was his word that sustained me and it was his word that released me.
I was at that job for a little over a year. If I hadn't relied on Jesus to get me through on a daily basis I couldn't have made it.
I was in the Word and worshipped every day -not because I'm some spiritual rock star, no, it's because it was my life-line. If I didn't hold onto Jesus through adversity, I would have given up and missed out on the refining he was doing in my life.
Staying power. Don't give up on God when faced with adversity. He's growing you, he's challenging you, and he's refining you.
If you were encouraged by this blog today, please share it with someone who needs to know they are not alone in the difficulty they are facing. -Tasha
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