Read: Philippians 3:7-11
It’s forty degrees below freezing point, but with the wind chill factor, it feels a lot colder. The fingertips of the guitarist are numb, and the snow makes it harder to walk for everyone. But the night is not getting any younger and the people are getting ready for bed. The team pushes on and rings the bell on one more door. Caroling is challenging but caroling in the northern hemisphere, it’s a different kind and level of challenge.
When I think about the way we serve in the church, I cannot help but be in total awe of our sheer love and dedication for God and His work here on earth. I deeply admire the brethren in their partnership with their leaders in doing the work of the Lord.
Many times late at night I’d still hear the worship team rehearsing, their spouses and kids left at home, or staying up late with them in the church. Those who serve in the accounting stay behind after everyone is gone, laboring until late just to balance everything. The props and design team; the brothers, and sometimes sisters, who put up the LED video wall; the ones who do graphics design, those who do the culinary work, those who minister in the children’s ministry, the program directors, those who open up and maintain extensions, and so on and so forth. Enumerating all the ministries in the church would make me go far beyond our 500-word limit of our daily devotionals.
But what I am trying to say is that the selfless sacrifice of each and every one of us in the church is nothing short of praiseworthy. By the grace of God, through the teachings and doctrines and the way of life handed down to us by God’s servant-leaders, we have been taught to love God and abound in our service. Equally noteworthy is the dedication of those who are in the full time ministry.
One wonders, what made the church in the end-time, and the early believers to serve in such a way? The early believers sold their properties and gave them to the apostle’s feet. Many became martyrs in times of persecution. Paul, the apostle who used to persecute the church, became God’s instrument in bringing the gospel to the regions beyond Jerusalem. What made them and us take on such a perspective on life and service?
It is the perspective transforming power of the resurrection power of the Lord Jesus Christ. It opened the eyes of our heart, enlightened us that now we know the hope to which God has called us, the riches of His glorious inheritance in us. “That power is like the working of His mighty strength, which He exerted in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at his right hand in the heavenly realms,” (Ephesians 1:18-20).
I want to encourage you today to keep going in your service to God because the resurrection power is always available, inexhaustible, and incomparable. Pray that your perspective in life may continually be transformed so that you may be able to serve God abundantly and do His will.
Reflect:
How has your perspective changed since you grew in understanding and appreciation of the will of God?
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