I had a very charming young lady staying with me once who told me this wonderful story about the kind of difference that Jesus Christ made in her own life when she was probably about eighteen years old. And this is the sort of story that I’m always looking for. And it thrills my soul to see that there is practical, down-to-earth, visible difference that Jesus Christ has made in somebody’s life.
And she said she had been going to, I think it was a Young Life meeting where the speaker talked about honoring your father and your mother. And she said most of the time it was going in one ear and out the other. And all of a sudden something clicked, and she said, “Oh, I’m supposed to honor my father and my mother. And my mother and I are like two cats a lot of times.”
And she said, “I went home and I began to think about it and I thought oh, I can’t do that. This thing about being a Christian is too much.” But she said, “I began to pray that God would help me to do that, whatever it meant. I really didn’t know what it meant. But I knew that complaining and being grumpy and hard to get along with was certainly not fitting to someone who honors father and mother.”
She went on to say, “Later, I wanted to go to a certain event and I asked my mother if I could go.” She was still living at home, and so although she was seventeen or eighteen, she knew that she was under their authority. Well, her mother said she could not go to the event. And she said, “I said, okay.” And then she said, “I couldn’t believe my own ears. I couldn’t believe it. I went into my room and I sat down and I said, whoa. It’s the first time in my whole life that I haven’t argued with my mother.” Now that was step one in that girl’s obedience to Jesus Christ.
And it’s all very well to make wonderful professions about being a Christian, to do your praying and your reading and your hymn singing and go to church and do this and that and the other thing. But when it comes right down to where the rubber hits the road, what kind of a difference does it make? And that girl was able to say, “Thank You, Lord. My mother said no. It was my opportunity to obey Jesus Christ.” So that’s our first point for this chapter, gratitude and acceptance should distinguish the Christian.
**As we draw closer to Thanksgiving, we wanted to share this excerpt originally published in Suffering is Never for Nothing pg. 63-64.