So many times in my life I thought my service in a church was how I got to heaven. This lead me to run myself in the ground trying to serve “enough” for God to love me enough. Thank you God for clarity, understanding and maturity to help me release this! Gods love is not conditional . The word of God says God SO loved the world He gave His only begotten son (John 3:16), the ultimate sacrifice! He already paid the price for my salvation, for YOUR salvation. There is not one thing we can or can’t do that would disqualify me from His grace and mercy. So fast forward to 2020, the year of clarity, a major shaking of the entire world by God by way of a pandemic. Forced to be in our homes, being a servant got majorly defined. So then the question came was serving a church home the standard? Maybe not. Maybe God was trying to show us His intention for us as servants.
We spend so much time using worldly measures to determine if we are good enough falling into the sin trap of comparison a trap that breeds jealousy and malice, things that God despises. We can’t continue to allow social media and the words and judgements of others to plant seeds of doubt and uncertainty in our hearts. The cure to this is obedience to God. This comes through a personal relationship with Him. Hearing the word from others and following others is great and helpful however if we don’t go back to God we are out of order. I will confess at times I have taken the word of others, which was anointed and filled with Gods goodness, but I didn’t take it back to God and it fell to the ground dead because I was too busy brooding and beating myself up in confusion not knowing what God wanted me to do with the word. Sometimes His answer was nothing because it didn’t apply to me at that moment.
The pandemic shifted things for all of us, caused us to redefine and reimagine what God meant when He said:
“Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.”
John 12:26 NIV
See we thought, at least I thought I had it all figured out. I just need to be apart of a church, worship on Sunday, Bible study Wednesday, serve on ministries and that was it. I was good and so many others thought the same thing and then we couldn’t go to church anymore for a whole year and the question was “am I still straight with God now?” How Will God know if I am good enough if I can’t do what I was doing anymore. I was so enlightened in that season we were all thrown in by God to realize that servanthood was deeper than just doing and the answer was in His word and it was deeper than just giving food to people.
I realize in John that Jesus is specific. He says "Whoever serves me must follow me." The question is am I following Jesus? Because that’s the only “do” He mentions in relation to serving. So then I seek His word to find out what it means to follow Him and it’s there because the answer is always in His word
“Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.”
Galatians 1:10 NIV
““No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.””
Luke 16:13 NIV
Just as a note, I wrote this blog post in 2021 and it's still super relevant in 2023. I used to think I had "made it" when I was in an established community and serving God, which wasn't bad, but my RELATIONSHIP with my Father was not established. THAT is where my firm foundation is now rooted and now my best friend the Holy Spirit, I am super sensitive too and I am able to recognize I cannot do this on my own and there is nothing I can do that would "earn" my love from God. I am more willing and able to humble myself and repent because I can see my flaws more clearly and understand the sovereignty of God. My decisions and service to God's children aren't for my own personal gain or to "look good" in a religious sense. This is the character God wanted to build in me and what He taught me. The question for you is.....What is God trying to build in you?
Comments