Worship empowers serving

Serving is Often Hard Work


Spiritual gifts are for using in service. If God didn't intend for your gifted to be used, there would no longer be any purpose for your life. Why would God allow us to live beyond any usefulness to Him? In His Wisdom and providence He has gifted each believer to serve and kept each of you alive to serve.

Some teach that once you discover and employ your spiritual gift,then serving becomes nothing but effortless joy. But that's not New Testament Christianity. The Apostle Paul wrote in Ephesians 4:12 of " the equipping of the saints for the work of service" Sometimes serving God and others is nothing less than hard work.

In scripture - Christians - are called not only the Children of God, but also servants of God. Recall how Paul typically starts his letters by referring to himself as a servant of God ( as in Romans 1:1) . Every Christian is a servant of God, and servants work.

The work of Serving God was so satisfying and fulfilling to Jesus that He called it His food. Serving God often made Him so tired He would fall asleep during a storm in an open boat. It once meant forty days without eating. Service for Jesus meant frequent nights of sleeping outside on the ground. It meant getting up before daylight to have any time alone. But in the midst of all the weariness, hunger, thirst, pain, and inconvenience, JESUS said that -" My food is to do the Will of him who sent me and to finish his work" - the work of serving God was so meaningful that it was like food.! it nourished Him, is strengthened Him, it satisfied Him, and He devoured it!

Serving God is work, but there's no work so rewarding.
God sees and knows of your service to Him, and He will never forget it. He will reward you in Heaven for it because He is faithful and just God. I love Hebrews 6:10
" God is not unjust : He will not forget your work and the love you have shown him as you have helped his people and continue to help them".

Disciplined service to God is work, hard and costly labor sometimes, but it will endure for all eternity.
more application :

1) Worship empowers serving

2) Serving expresses worship

Godliness requires a disciplined balance between the two.

IN worship - we find fresh reasons and desire to serve. Isaiah - didn't say" HERE am I. Send ME"! until after his vision of God. That's the order- worship, then worship-empowered service.

As a A.W.Tozer put it " Fellowship with God leads straight to obedience and good works. That is the divine order and it can never reversed" The work of service is too hard without the power we receive for it through worship.
The LORD JESUS was always the servant of all, the servant of servants, the SERVANT. He said " I am among you as the one who serves" ( luke 22:27). If we are to be like Christ, we must discipline ourselves to serve as JESUS served.
and now...at the final ... a good note

WANTED!!!
wanted:"Gifted volunteers for difficult service in the local expression of the Kingdom of God. Motivation to serve should be obedience to God, gratitude, gladness, forgiveness, humility, and love. Service will rarely be glorious. Temptation to quit places of service will sometimes be strong. Volunteers must be faithful in spite of long hours, little or no visible results, and possibly no recognition except from God in eternity.

A.W Tozer.

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“Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian life-
Ten Questions to DIAGNOSE your SPIRITUAL HEALTH”