Asides

I hate serving.  I love serving. You could say I have a love/hate relationship with serving.  I hate getting started because its inconvenient.  It takes me out of my game.  I don’t know anybody there.  I don’t know what to do or how to do it.  So my default setting is usually: “don’t I do enough already?”  Then, after the guilt sets in, the evil twin of, “I don’t do enough.”

These are the two places from which Christians should never serve.  Because frankly, you could never “do enough” or not “do enough.”  Christ already did everything.  The first is born of pride the second guilt.  If we’re “doing enough,” we’re taking credit for doing something that we think should cause God to love us more.  And when we’re not “doing enough” we think God loves us less.  Both attitudes are opposite sides of the sanctification by works coin.  God won’t love you more for doing more and he won’t love you less for dong less. But precisely because he loves us unconditionally like that- we should love him back- in obedience.

So rather than looking at service opportunities from the “works” binary, simply try to obey… for obedience sake.  Simple obedience is the gateway drug to sanctification.  Now surely there will be valid times when you can’t or shouldn’t.  But simple obedience gets us over the reluctance hump.  Once you try it, figure it out, meet the people, serving becomes something you want to do rather than have to do.  That’s a heart being sanctified.