The Personal Testimony of June Faulkner
Genesis 32:24-28
“So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.” But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” The man asked him, “What is your name?” “Jacob,” he answered. Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome.”
Jacob wrestled with God until daybreak and came out with a sore hip and a new name. I wrestled with God through not one, but many, sleepless nights and I had more than a hip out of joint when daybreak came. I was wrestling with God and myself, because I knew there was something He wanted me to do, and I just wasn’t ready to do it. I came out humbled, but with purpose: God wanted me to share my story.
All this started last year when two of my oldest son’s friends made a comment about my appearance. It was nothing bad, but for some reason it kept coming to my mind over the next few weeks. I’m a fairly self-confident person, and it doesn’t matter to me what two teenage girls think about the way I look. Sometimes things happen that don’t seem important, but still get stuck in my mind. When this happens it is usually because God is trying to show me something. In this case He wanted me to see something very simple: these girls do not know me.
My son’s friends had looked at a very small part of who I am – my outward appearance – and made their judgment based on what they saw. God, however, also wanted me to see that there are other people in my life who only see a small part of me and think they know who I am.
I started thinking about how I saw adults when I was a kid, especially the ones I went to church with. All I ever saw of them was the part they let me see on Sunday mornings, their “church faces”. I was not allowed to see the mistakes they made like the rest of the world.
Through this observation I began to understand that the kids at my church probably see me the same way. They can’t look at me now and see who I was when I was their age, or even comprehend that I was ever their age. Sometimes withholding information from someone can be the same as lying which is hypocritical. That is when the hard truth came to me: If I don’t care enough about them to be honest about what it really means to walk with Christ, (or to walk away from Him), then all I would ever be is just another adult trying to tell them what to do with their lives.
I want to be more than that for them, and for you. Therefore, I have a story to tell.