Serving

Serving. We hear about it all the time, but what exactly is serving? And more importantly, what should it mean to us? 

In the noun form, a serving can be defined as a single portion of food or drink, a helping, or the actual act of a person who serves. 

The verb form yields different results: to work for, to be useful, to help, to go through, to render active service to, and to render obedience or homage to. 

But the act of serving, that is much more. Serving is necessary. It is fulfilling. And it is a command for those who follow Christ. 

“Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, 

if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, 

if any tenderness and compassion, 

then make my joy complete by being like-minded, 

having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. 

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. 

In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: 

Who, being in very nature God, 

did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; 

rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant,

 being made in human likeness.” 

(Philippians 2:1-7) 

The act of serving comes with a lot of requirements. Serving requires us to love, to share the Holy Spirit, to have compassion and to be tender. We are required to be self-less in our serving and to put the needs of others above our own. 

A lot can be said about serving but here is what it is not: service is not just checking off a task that makes you feel that you’ve done your good deed for the day. Serving is not volunteering to beef up your resume. Serving is recognizing a need, those who are hurting and giving them a face and a name and acting accordingly. And it doesn’t have to look the same for everyone. 

Service to others should not only be viewed as a commandment of obedience, but also as a faith-builder. Through the act of service we create a bridge that allows us to reach our Father and see Him through different lenses. It reveals His glorious nature in a way that we can so easily miss when we are too wrapped up in our own lives. Serving allows us to get outside of ourselves and truly appreciate our blessings while doing so. 

How has serving helped you see God?

Things that Are Impossible for God - Week 5

This semester we have been navigating through our series Things that Are Impossible for God, exploring what is impossible for God in the sense that it is contrary to His good and loving nature.

We have learned that being untruthful is impossible for God, proving that we can trust Him. We have discussed how it is impossible for God to reject us or leave us stranded. And most recently, we addressed the concept that it is impossible for God not to care.

If you come from a church background, you may have a family member who dominates the prayers at every holiday gathering for so long that they have to actually increase their volume to be heard over grumbling stomachs. All you can think about is shoveling that turkey in your mouth and they are spending precious time soliciting prayer for their dental assistant’s cat. Seems a bit trivial when they can be praying for strength and recovery regarding another family member’s health or restoration of a marriage or safety and provision or that you don’t kill anyone working on your group project, right?

What we fail to realize, though, is that no matter how much we tend not to care about their idea of what’s appropriate to pray about, God cares. He cares about every single one of their prayers – and ours – because He cares about us.

Care can come in many forms. It can be expressed through protection, concern, investment of time, or being willingly inconvenienced, just to name a few. The thing with humans is that all of these forms tend to be conditional. We will be inconvenienced until we feel the other person is no longer worth the trouble. We will protect them, as best we can. Our concern for what others have going on in their lives extends as far as it possibly can without overlapping into the concern we have for other things that demand our attention.

With our God though, His care for us is like His love for us: unconditional. And He doesn’t just care about the “big” things either. He cares about even the tiniest details of our lives. Did you know that as humans (those of us who aren’t bald) we have anywhere from 90,000-140,000 strands of hair on our heads? Every one of us. Yet, Matthew 10:29-31 tells us that God has numbered each one of them.

“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.”

You better believe that a God who pays that much attention to what you put in a ponytail or under a baseball cap, and who also takes care not to let birds out of His sight that are sold for much less than the price He paid with His son for His precious children, that kind of God certainly cares about what plagues your mind and what’s going on inside of your heart.

God appreciates authentic prayer. Not the stale, programmed prayers we offer because we know we should or we feel guilty if we haven’t. God cares about the things that stir up our hearts, what we can’t shake from our thoughts. God wants to hear about the guy or girl in whom we are interested and the exam we’re stressed about and the lust we are struggling with and the anger we have and the worry we feel. In prayer, we are to thank God. We are to acknowledge Him as the provider of our blessings and respond in gratitude. We are also to be truthful. We cannot hide anything from God, so there is no use trying and no point pretending.

How glorious would it be if we could just leave all of our reservations behind as we bow our heads and hearts before the Lord? Why is that so difficult?

You may be thinking, “I could do that when I was younger, when all I had to worry about was finishing my math homework before I could go outside and play. But life has gotten a lot harder the older I’ve gotten. Worrying about finding a job or a spouse or battling an addiction or losing a parent or just trying to make it through midterms, those things make authentic prayers more difficult. I know things could be worse. I know I’m blessed. My financial struggles can’t even be called struggles when I think of all the people who went to bed hungry last night, and their bed was a pile of newspapers in a one-room house. No, I should censor my prayers. God can’t possibly care about the argument I had with my roommate. Instead, I’ll pray for peace. Authentic prayers used to be so simple. They were simple when life was simple.”

Our lives are not really as complicated as we make them out to be. Yes, things happen. Tragedy strikes and unexpected complications arise. Rather than depending on our parents, we begin to accept responsibility for our own lives and then before you know it other people are depending on us. We graduate high school, head to college, expect to find a great job and a loving spouse and live the American dream. That’s how life works. At least, it’s supposed to, right?

But somewhere in the midst of all that life happens. Life happens to us. And when life happens we begin to lose sight of the simplicity. When so many trials happen in a day that all you want to do is go to sleep so that you don’t have to think anymore, that’s when life happens to us. When that drink that is supposed to make you relax turns into two to help you forget your stress, and that leads to four or five every night, that’s when life happens. When you begin to lash out at others because you can’t figure out how to express what you feel internally, you know you should be happy, you know things could be worse, life is happening.

We will call on anyone in the world before we call on our Father. We will call our friends, our parents, that random person we met last weekend...just to talk. And then when we feel as if they don’t care, they don’t understand us or what we have going on, we feel abandoned, question our worth and get angry or defensive.

But from the One who will not reject us, who cannot lie to us, and who cares for us like no other – from Him, we shy away.

Rather than passively letting life happen to us our job is to recognize that sometimes God uses these happenings to point us back toward him. He drives us to our knees to call out to Him.

There is a difference in the way God and people express care for others. People express it cautiously, sometimes with expectancy of reciprocation; it’s often temporary, and sometimes self-serving.

The way God expresses His care is not that way. It is so counter-cultural. He is so counter-cultural. He is self-less. He extends His care to everyone, excitedly and eternally. Eternally.

What can we do to receive that care?

“What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us.”

(1 Corinthians 2:12)

As with everything else we have learned this semester, until we realize that God does not do things the way we’re used to them being done, that He does not treat us the way we are used to being treated, until we recognize this we will not be able to accept the gifts he has freely given. And what a shame that is. These gifts are given with no strings attached, all we have to do is accept them and the One who gives them.

“Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker; for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care.”
(Psalm 95:6-7)

Reflection Questions
· What emotions arise in you when you feel as if someone who is close to you doesn’t care?
· How does it feel to know that God cares about every single thought, action, and prayer of ours, no matter how small we think they are?
· Though it may be difficult to understand, we know that God cares about us. How can we acknowledge that we care about God? 

A Psalm 40 Story

The following guest post is a contribution from a very talented young lady whose truthfulness and obedience serve to inspire many. Here's just a part of her song.


I'm a girl who loves Jesus.

I'm a girl who thinks reading is the best use of time. Who believes in the power of community. Who thinks words have the power of ultimate healing. Who asks too many questions. Who's scared of roller blades. Who just discovered Coldplay.

I'm a girl with a story. A song.

A story and a song about the inexplicably wonderful, unfathomable, immeasurable grace of God.

I grew up in church. In a wonderful, Gospel-centered church of which I am blessed to be still be a part. Sunday school was tables of rice and felt figures of Noah's animals. Middle school was awkward Bible studies and faithful leaders. High school was mission trips and lock-ins. I was that girl who attended several Vacation Bible Schools in one summer and received stellar marks in Bible memorization. God was my ambiance...

...but He wasn't Lord of my life. I was religious, but not a disciple. My faith was shallow and lacked heart.

And then, college came and I shipped myself 900 miles away. It became harder and harder to find a church, to find genuineness in my faith. In four years, my words became sharp, my tongue harsh, my actions impure, my thoughts ugly, my nature prideful. I ran to God when my guilt was too much and once a verse here and a verse there soothed me over, I cut a quick path back to my self-righteous lifestyle.

After graduation, I reluctantly kicked and screamed my way back to Charlotte and parked my 'I'm going back to Boston as soon as I get the chance' attitude. I immersed myself in my church again because I loved it there - all the while hatching plans for an escape back to a college kind of life. A life without Christ, a life without vulnerability, accountability, prayer. A life of prideful behavior, undisciplined thoughts, and impure actions.

Oh, but then some dear, faithful, awesome Jesus-loving friends asked me to be a part of their bible study on Wednesday nights. ha. ha. I was too cool for bible studies. Accountability was for losers. But their persistence won me over and I found myself on their living room couch. And as the weeks turned into months, I was shockingly IN LOVE. With the idea of community, the concept of people being together, reading Scripture. It was refreshing, in every sense of the word.

And then one night, it happened. WHAT IS THIS? IS THIS WHAT THE GOSPEL IS ALL ABOUT? He, who knew no sin, became sin? The wind was knocked out of my sails and I was stunned to my knees. This Jesus, the Christ, this Savior has redeemed every part of me, every part – thoughts, words, actions. And somewhere along the way, I had missed that. I had failed to live that. But His grace is wider than any of our attempts at living life our way and it swallowed me in.

I was baptized!

And then the real battle began.

The daily wrestling of how to fully give my life away. How do I do this - this life fully for Christ? And then my family left my church to join another and the seams began to unravel. The harsh truth and the conviction stared me down every day – in what does my faith lie? My parents? My church? Or in this ever present, ever constant, faithful Redeemer who laid down His life for me?

It was a critical analysis as fear, anxiety, and judgment gripped me and became my daily language. I became weak of stomach and full of tears. I became harsh of tongue and quick to anger. My thoughts were full of lies and constant and untamed.

But the grace of God!

Oh, how it saves.

Psalm 40 is the song of a God who hears our cries, who raises us up from pits of destruction and sets our feet on solid ground. He puts a new song in our mouths, words of praise. We are new creations with new stories. And no matter how wide or deep or high our miry bogs are - His grace is that much wider, higher, deeper.

This grace of God - it gives us a new song to sing, a new story to tell, a new life to live. We are never too far from His love. We have HOPE and we rest in the knowledge of Jesus - that He loves us fiercely, with a deeply passionate love, and that He is a good, good Father who loves what He created.

Tim Keller says, "Truths about God's glory and Jesus's saving work are not just believed with the mind, but create inner music and an inner relish in the soul. And because the object of this song is not favorable life circumstances (which can change) but rather the truth and grace of Jesus (which cannot), this heart song does not weaken in times of difficulty."

Our songs, our inner music is not based on what we do or what happens to us or how our circumstances look in the moment. It is based on the pure love and pure truth and grace of Jesus, which is unshakeable and unchangeable.

So take heart. Root yourselves deeply in the love of God. Turn to Jesus, get down on your knees in confession and repentance, and feel His grace, peace, and forgiveness wash over you. Live your life by the death and resurrection of Christ. And when you stumble and fall and fail and weep, remember your heart song. It is rooted in something that cannot be shaken.

So, I'm a girl who strives, desires, seeks - who loves God and loves people and who gets it wrong a lot of the time and does no good on her own - but who, in her heart, is learning dependency and humility and a deep, deep love for this Savior Jesus Christ.

And that's grace. It's chipping away at my heart. It is only by His grace that we are able to live faithful lives committed to Him.

That's my story. And that's my song.

To read more from Lindsay, head over to her blog.

To submit your own contribution for a guest post, email college@mecklenburg.org.

Things that are Impossible for God - Week 3

We all have fears. Some make sense, some are a bit irrational, and they don’t always seem to fit neatly into a category, but no matter how you spin it most everyone is afraid of something.

The sorority girl down the hall may be terrified of being alone, which is why you can count on her to buy dinner for all her friends and leave her door wide open waiting for others to visit.

That guy in class who is in eight different organizations, works two part-time jobs and just volunteered himself to be the leader of your group project may be struggling with a fear of failure.

The girl who skips class and hasn’t contributed anything to that same group project may also battling a fear of failure, so she doesn’t even put forth any effort.

The bouncer at your favorite bar may have a fear of rejection, so he copes by lifting more weights and intimidating unruly students.

The mother of the family you nanny for seems to have an excess of…everything. But it may be because she remembers growing up in a household that lived paycheck to paycheck and she is so fearful of having nothing that she buys everything.

Me? Well, I have an irrational fear of being murdered.

Maybe it comes from watching too many episodes of CSI or Denzel movies. Or just turning on the news.

Either way, it’s there. And the point where it passes paranoia and ventures into neurotic is when this fear affects my ability to help others. Whether it’s gathering enough courage to step outside of my comfort zone and talk to a stranger or stop to help someone stranded on the side of the road, this fear cripples my ability to serve others.

And the point where it becomes really unhealthy is when it affects my spiritual life.

Was He whispering to me and I chose to ignore Him? Did He intend for me to help them?
Because if He did I’m sure He would protect me.
What could God have done for me in that situation?
What could He have done through me?
Where am I inserting my own fears in the place where God’s trust belongs?

Take a look at Matthew 25:34-40.

You can imagine the guilt felt driving past stranded vehicles when this verse creeps in, turning you to think I just left Jesus on the side of the road. What kind of person leaves Jesus on the side of the road?! I mean, if I knew that was really Jesus I would have stopped.

If that's true, why don’t we have that same heart and mindset all the time?

What if we approached every single person as we would approach Jesus? What if we saw His face in the face of the hurting?

If we approached conversations with our parents the way we would approach a conversation with Jesus there would be no yelling or disrespect from either parties. If we approached a situation with friends the way we would approach one with Jesus there would likely be a lot more understanding on both ends. And if we stopped and stepped outside of our comfort zone to truly serve someone, in the way we would as if we were serving Jesus, His hand would be completely over that situation.

We were each created in the image of God and He lives in each one of us, which means, truly, we should be able to see God when we look at others, when we look into their eyes, no matter how they act or treat us out in their humanness.

Christine Caine, founder of the A21 Campaign, an organization that rescues sex-trafficked women and children, shares a poignant piece of advice: 

"Just because something is not known or applauded on earth does not mean

that it is not recorded or valued in Heaven."

It is the good we do when we don’t expect anything in return that is recorded in Heaven.

The choices we make to help someone out, to better someone’s life, in private, just because we are called to.

When we treat people as Jesus would treat them, when we treat others with the heart of Jesus, that is what is valued in Heaven. That is what angels get excited about and dance around for. Not for accomplishments, for how much food we donate or how many children we sponsor. Yes, those things are wonderful. They are great and necessary and we should continue to do them. But what we do behind the scenes, the people we do life with, the people we don’t leave stranded to fend for themselves, but we love them and point them to Christ through that love, that just lights God up.

So, how do we move past the fear – or any other thing that is holding us back from doing this?

We can rest in the truth that it is impossible for God to leave us stranded. He will not bring us to a task and leave us to fend for ourselves. There may be periods of waiting, periods where He is silent or may even seem to be absent, but He’s not. He never leaves us.

"So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God.

I will strengthen you and help you;

I will uphold you with my righteous right hand."

Isaiah 41:10

Once we accept that, we can stop looking for comfort and value in other things and focus on God.

We can take advantage of the boldness that we have in Christ and take risks, whether it’s with our spirituality, at home, in school, at work, with relationships, whatever.

We can step out in faith and know that God is right there with us.

And lastly, we can celebrate the process through which God is bringing us.  

"Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this:

He will make your righteous reward shine like the dawn, 

your vindication like the noonday sun.

Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; 

do not fret when people succeed in their ways, 

when they carry out their wicked schemes.

Refrain from anger and turn from wrath;

do not fret -- it leads only to evil.

For those who are evil will be destroyed, 

but those who hope in the Lord will inherit the land."

Psalm 37:5-9 

Other Key Verses

• Hebrews 13:5
• John 10:28
• Isaiah 54:10
• Proverbs 3:5-6
• Psalm 37:23-24

Reflection Questions

• Have you ever been stranded before? How did you feel?
• How has fear crippled you, specifically preventing you from doing God's work?
• How do you discern between making a logical decision and missing God's call, being disobedient to His promptings?
• Have you ever felt like God left you stranded? What happened in that situation?
• How does the truth that God cannot leave you stranded make you feel?

Things That Are Impossible for God - Week 2

A couple of days ago we posted about rejection, and ended that blog sharing the confession that often we feel shameful when we realize that God indeed knows all of our innermost thoughts and feelings (good and bad), and every act of sin we commit that goes unseen by others.

That presented another idea we must wrestle with: shame.

Shame and guilt – they both come from the devil.

Hmm, but you thought that we were supposed to feel guilty about the things we do wrong? That’s how we know it’s wrong…right?

Not quite. See, guilt is the feeling we get when we have done something wrong. And shame is the belief we accept that there is something wrong with us because of our sin. Neither of these are of the Lord. Conviction, on the other hand, is the Holy Spirit working in us, revealing our sins to us and prompting us to repent and turn away from them.

The goal of the Christian life is not to be a better person by sinning less, thereby eliminating the feelings of guilt and shame – though, through the blessings of the Holy Spirit we are able to receive strength from the Lord to resist temptations. Unfortunately, because we live in a fallen world, we will always struggle with sin. The goal of the Christian life is to know God and to love and honor Him.

1 John 1:9 tells us “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

That should not be translated “do what you want, and ask forgiveness when the fun is over.” God will forgive us any sin we repent of and genuinely make the effort to turn away from, as a result of His incredible mercy, but we are not to abuse this privilege. That gets dangerously close to the territory of cheap grace, and we want to steer clear of that.

We know that faith without works does not give a complete picture of Christianity (James 2:14-19), but it is also important to acknowledge that it is not by acts that we receive God’s approval. It is the condition of our hearts and the nature of our relationship with Him that matter. It is that faith which compels us to act.

This also helps us realize that because there is nothing that we can do that will make God love us more, because His love is freely given to us, there is also nothing we can do to make Him love us less. This frees us from the stress of assuming God’s love for us is based on our accomplishments, and it also frees us from the possibility of feeling rejected by God if we fail to perform up to a certain standard.

God loves us for who we are, not for what we can offer Him.

And who we are is a people who were created by Him, in His image. We are God’s children, whom He loves very dearly. He made us in His image and He accepts us as His creation.

God can never reject us because God can never not love us.

And while He accepts us for who we are, He loves us too much to leave us that way.

Ever looked back on a situation that so clearly screams of the glory and blessings of God, but while you were in the midst of that situation, all you felt was confusion and abandonment, rejection and despair? That is what a dear friend calls God’s sanctification process. In order to get us to be the people He wants us to be, God allows us to go through things that may not always be favorable. As God shapes us and molds us, He uses other tools, people, and situations to remove from us what He cannot use for the glory of His kingdom. And we must remember throughout this that He always has our best interest in mind.

This is a lot to take in, but here are a couple of ways we can respond:

Accept God’s free gift of love 

• 2 Corinthians 6:1 warns us, “Working together with Him, we also appeal to you, ‘Don’t receive God’s grace in vain.’” 

Live life with new confidence

• Philippians 1:6 says, “being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” 

And this frees us to accept ourselves and others

• Matthew 7:1-2 says, “Do not judge, so that you won’t be judged. For with the judgment you use, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” 
• Go back and replace the word judge with reject. “Do not reject, so that you won’t be rejected. For with the rejection you use, you will be rejected, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” 

That puts a new spin on the Golden Rule.



Reflection Questions
· What feelings arise when you hear that it is impossible for God to reject you?
· How does this truth help you see God in a new light?