Fulfilling The Need

It is easy to live in this excitement and desire to serve God through the gifts, talents, and passions he has given us. When is the right time to move? When our life seems so mundane, slow, and God seems silent. When you're in a season that seems like one for learning than for pouring out. How do you continue to fulfill the great commission? 

We learn to serve in the mundane. By now you know and are fully aware that life is short. Yet doing the big things for God seems like the only powerful way to reach others. How can you in all your weakness do the BIG things for God? When God has not even provided opportunities that you deem worthy as being humongous? We all want to belong and be apart of something. Whether that is through a ministry at church or a nonprofit. We want to be the missionaries for Christ. To be apart of a group that serves together. Yet how can you serve God when you are not involved, and you are in a season that seems lonely. How can you serve God and others, when the open doors for being involved  in physical ministry are being closed? This is the pressure us humans put on ourselves. 

Sometimes there is more power in taking life slow. In being present. Most importantly, in serving through the little things. Then the pressure to do the big things is off our backs. For the last semester and a half, I have been struggling with these questions. I longed to be apart of something. I was so used to being involved in ministry, in going out of my way to serve others. Honestly, its hard to find areas to serve in this season. A season that is more quiet than others. One that takes patience with God and myself as I am learning and adjusting. 

I just realized that for so long I have found my identity in being a student leader, volunteer in inner-city mission, and friend. I did not allow room for God to reveal who I truly was to Him. It is so easy to come to college with so many expectations and become so overwhelmed by every opportunity my university has to offer. Yet I am not defined by the open and closed doors filled with many opportunities to serve with on campus. For some of you that may not know me at all, I had the amazing opportunity to lead students and friends from my youth group to an apartment complex in the inner-city of my hometown. God placed this desire on my heart to minister to these families and kids while I was living full-time in Fresno. I learned so much during this time. Towards the end I started to find security in this idea that serving these families was my life calling. 

I think I just assumed that if God had called me to this community then I am supposed to be serving in inner-city ministry for the rest of my life. Now this could be the case for the future, however with this mindset I felt that I needed to continue to serve in BIG ways. I forgot the whole purpose of why I obeyed God in the first place. He placed a desire and showed me this community's need. Then he gave me the strength and desire to fulfill it as best I could. That is Gods call to do ministry.

Wherever we are, we need to tend to each need we see, as best we can and beyond with Gods strength. 

Friends, it is so easy to become discouraged at a slow paced season of life. While we are waiting to make the next step in life or even in the midst of a season that is fruitful with opportunity, let us continue to fill every need that we come across with Gods guidance and strength. Let us remember that we are already apart of something bigger, a ministry which is Gods family. As long as we are Gods children, we apart of something bigger.

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us." Hebrews 12:1