DAY 29 Thinking about My Purpose
POINT TO PONDER: Service is not optional.
VERSE TO REMEMBER: “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” EPHESIANS 2:10 (NIV)
QUESTION TO CONSIDER: What is holding me back from accepting God’s call to serve him?
Anytime you use your God-given abilities to help others, you are fulfilling your calling.
The Bible says, “All of you together are Christ’s body, and each one of you is a separate and necessary part of it.”
There is no correlation between size and significance. Every ministry matters because we are all dependent on each other to function.
What happens when one part of your body fails to function? You get sick. The rest of your body suffers. Imagine if your liver decided to start living for itself: “I’m tired! I don’t want to serve the body anymore! I want a year off just to be fed. I’ve got to do what’s best for me! Let some other part take over.” What would happen? Your body would die. Today thousands of local churches are dying because of Christians who are unwilling to serve. They sit on the sidelines as spectators, and the Body suffers.
You are commanded to serve God. Jesus was unmistakable: “Your attitude must be like my own, for I, the Messiah, did not come to be served, but to serve and to give my life.”14 For Christians, service is not optional, something to be tacked onto our schedules if we can spare the time. It is the heart of the Christian life. Jesus came “to serve” and “to give” — and those two verbs should define your life on earth, too.
The old comparison between the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea is still true. Galilee is a lake full of life because it takes in water but also gives it out. In contrast, nothing lives in the Dead Sea because, with no outflow, the lake has stagnated.
The last thing many believers need today is to go to another Bible study. They already know far more than they are putting into practice. What they need are serving experiences in which they can exercise their spiritual muscles.
Serving and giving sum up God’s fourth purpose for your life. Mother Teresa once said, “Holy living consists in doing God’s work with a smile.”
Most of the time we’re more interested in “serve us” than service. We say, “I’m looking for a church that meets my needs and blesses me,” not “I’m looking for a place to serve and be a blessing.” We expect others to serve us, not vice versa.
The mature follower of Jesus stops asking, “Who’s going to meet my needs?” and starts asking, “Whose needs can I meet?” Do you ever ask that question?
The Bible says, “Each of us will have to give a personal account to God.”15 Think about the implications of that.
God will compare how much time and energy we spent on ourselves compared with what we invested in serving others.
The Bible warns unbelievers, “He will pour out his anger and wrath on those who live for themselves,”
We are only fully alive when we’re helping others. Jesus said, “If you insist on saving your life, you will lose it. Only those who throw away their lives for my sake and for the sake of the Good News will ever know what it means to really live.”17 This truth is so important that it is repeated five times in the Gospels.
God wants to use you to make a difference in his world. He wants to work through you. What matters is not the duration of your life, but the donation of it. Not how long you lived, but how you lived.
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