Serving God In Many Ways

At first when I heard that I had to serve God and continue to obey Him to get any further spiritually, I wondered what to do. Donate money? Join the worship team, or the youth committee, or the art team?

For the past few months, I've been missing the point. I've been spending empty prayers asking God how can I serve Him, and realising that one of the ways to serve God is obeying Him in everything that we do. For example, doing the chores. Instead of thinking as something you have to do just for the hell of it, do it in a way that glorifies God. For example, you might wash the dishes, knowing that you are serving others and setting an example for Christ. You might stack the chairs after church service, for the same reason.

I know that I find it hard sometimes to find any application for serving God in everything, and one area is under my university work. It's probably because I've never thought about it, and I for a long time have treated study as something I had to do, something I had to fulfil, almost if like life had a check list, and 'getting uni degree' was on it because it was the prerequisite for 'getting job', 'getting money' and 'getting a living'. But no longer is 'getting uni degree' the easy way out, unless you are prepared to sacrifice your life.

I am increasingly in doubt in whether I can make the transaction to sell my soul to architecture, but I know that none of that matters. But something I have to do is to give my soul to God, and in His hands nothing goes wrong. I would be secured into eternal life in Heaven. But that as well, needs a lot of hard work as well and it's not as simple. But it is way more preferable then sinking into a downward spiral, not knowing where you're going in life. As Jesus says, if you follow him:

For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
-Matthew 11:30

I realised that it is important to give up everything in order to serve God, and there is still a lot of areas in my life I have to give up to God. I thought that giving up everything to serve God was to drop everything, proclaim to your parents that you're going off to a missionary to the far East and never coming back. That is obviously the wrong idea (first, if it was everyone would be doing it, but that's truly not the case here). One thing is to give up everything, you have to give up selfish ambitions. To do something for self-fulfilment, to do something in life because you want to show how successful and great you are, or because you want to join the rich and famous, or you want to be seen by your friends as 'cool'. To give up the fact that you never are in control of your life, and God is.

But that's just a start. For example, to serve God in the current situation I'm in, I must not study architecture in the hope I will get recognised for being good at what I do, or earn a reputation solely by works (It's true anyway, whether God is in the picture or not). I must not extort anyone or ask anyone for favours/bribes. I must be willing to put a lot of hard work in, but not just to please my coordinators, but to show to God that I if I am a hard worker in other areas of my life, I can be a hard worker in my spiritual life (but at the same time, I must not neglect that part of my life). I must learn to treat people with respect, and don't start thinking that I am doing better off than most people, but be humble in everything I do. If I help certain people, it is for the good of God and not because I want brownie points or possibly their favours. I must be sincere with people, and be genuine; no spilt personalities. And I must not give in to drunken revelry, which is pretty easy to do given you hang out with certain people.

And the list could go on and on, but then I've read back the list, and I know that none of those applied to me last year. Wow.

I had made a mental list slowly during the last week and it was quite an eye-opener to me, and showed myself that I hadn't been quite giving 'all my life' to God (scrap quite giving; NOT giving), although it would have been probably the lyrics of half the songs I've sung in youth last year. All I can say is, I am in need of forgiveness. And I need to pick up the slack.

The most important thing I got out of youth last week is that it's very important in the way you set up as an example for Christ. If I continued to do the things I did last year, I would be giving Christians a bad name, I would be giving the church a bad name, and most importantly, I would be giving God a bad name. I can't go on and ignore what I've just done, if I've got to serve God.