I am in a small village in the North West of Romania called Sistarovat. This village is where 250 people call home. There are beautiful green grassy hills dotted with livestock. My team and I are situated on one of those hills at a summer camp. This camp has a ton of fun stuff to do like ping pong, foosball, volleyball, basketball, soccer, and badminton. This camp is currently only missing one thing- children.
So camp doesn’t start until next month, by the time they get here I will probably be on a different continent. So my ministry to the camp while I am here is preparing it for the kids to come. This includes cleaning, digging, mowing, raking, moving wood, painting and various other things. This is my 4th month of manual labor work and I have kept a fairly good attitude through it all even when it wasn’t exactly what I wanted to do. This month started to get to me and I really didn’t want to spend another month being sweaty and dirty every day.
Our team has started a Bible study on the book of James and as I was reading through the first chapter verse 9 really stood out to me. It says “believers in humble circumstance ought to take pride in their high position.” So as I have been feeling discouraged because I am assigned to do more physical work this month which I don’t enjoy this verse really applies to me and has made me change some of my thinking.
Instead of being upset with having work that I would never choose for myself at home I should be thankful and even “take pride” in what I have been given.
This seemingly lowly work is something I should take pride in.
This revelation has helped me be more positive and do everything unto the Lord. I am really working for Him and that is the most important work that I could be doing.
This theme of “humility” for this month has become more evident each day. My internal thoughts of me being “too good” for some of the work I am doing are being dealt with. I am beginning to accept that I in myself am not good enough in general. I need Christ to be glorified foremost and not my own capabilities. This is an extremely difficult lesson to learn and I do not have it all figured out yet.
Please pray for me in this process of learning humility.
