I have seen the model work through my job at 410 Bridge in countless ways but the one that tops it all is my personal life transformation that goes beyond the workplace setting. Like I shared at the beginning of this blog, I had reached a point in my life where I was looking for something to fill in the ‘emptiness’ one has when they are not living their God-given purpose – at that point, I didn’t understand what it meant to live in purpose. It is through my journey of working at The 410 Bridge that I came to realize what transformation and living your purpose means. It is not about titles, positions, career, money, or achievements (i.e. the things we think matter the most when we are finding our way in this world… the ‘good’ things).
When I began my career path, I knew I wanted to make an impactful difference in the lives of others. Something that would make me ‘feel good’ – similar to an addictive adrenaline rush that once gone, I wanted more and more of it just so that I could “feel good about myself”. Now that I think back, this was probably a selfish motive driven by my pride. What if the ‘good’ thing that I did/wanted to do had a negative effect on the person/people. Can doing a ‘good’ thing for someone be a ‘wrong’ thing to do? To the naked eye (before a mindset transformation has occurred), the 410 Bridge model can sometimes seem like one is giving their son a stone instead of bread (Mathew 7:9).
When I joined The 410 Bridge, I had no idea what God had in store for me – of how He was going to (and still continues to) transform me into the vessel I need to become so that He can fulfill the reason as to why He created me. It is here that I discovered that living in and fulfilling God’s purpose takes, obedience, humility, submission, and brokenness to come to terms with the fact that God has the blueprint of how He wants His purpose to be fulfilled.
This journey showed and taught me exactly that – and it continues to show me and teach me.
The 410 Bridge was the environment that God led me to, to fully live out that which He had put in me since creation. The reason I wake up and look forward to living that day is to be the voice of those in vulnerable and oppressed positions (Isaiah 61). Today if I get to a crossroad where I have to choose between doing the ‘good thing’ versus doing the ‘right thing’, I still have to struggle and wrestle with my human flesh but the thing that finally leads me to do the ‘right thing’ is the thought of how doing the ‘good thing’ has a high cost on destinies and generations. It’s amazing what God can do in and through us when we surrender and allow Him to work His will, in His own way, in His own time.
Transformation is a process where we move from one level to the next as we continue to discover and get a deeper revelation of how to live our God-given purpose day by day. Each one of us was created to live out and accomplish our life’s purpose. This far I have come it is, “Not by might, nor by power, but by The Spirit of The Living God.” (Zech. 4:6).
Claire Nyambati is The 410 Bridge Program Director in Kenya. As the program director, the main responsibility is to lead the program’s team of experts responsible in the areas of discipleship (spiritual development and accountability), education, economic development, agriculture, health, and water. Because the programs integrate with each other, the team’s objective is to work with the communities (through the leadership councils) to achieve holistic community development through making the local church the hero, doing community development with not for, focus on building relationships with the overall aim of helping them understand that poverty is not a material problem but a worldview issue. The team works to help communities identify what they have in their hands and tap into the potential of how to use what they have in their hands to restore their dignity, purpose, and freedom.
