A Call to Serve

Hallo there everyone. Today I will like to share with you a few things about my life experience when I was first called to serve God.

To begin with, I want to share with you this one word - Availability. So often, we feel we must have this and that, we must be good looking or skillful to serve. Take the music ministry for instance, we always feel, oh, I must have this before I can do this. But friends, let me share with you what did the LORD says in the Bible.

1 Samuel 16 v 7. 7 But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.

God wants you to make the space in your heart, to do things for Him, and not find a million excuses out when He calls us.

Why is God asking us to serve today?

1) God is asking us to serve today, because, He wants to train us and equip us gradually to be effective witness and servants.

2) He has actually a lot of gifts He wants to give to us. Let me share with you something, when I was just 12 years old, I was never able to speak in public. I was talkative no doubt but it was all channeled to poor use (gossip / tell crude jokes etc.) But when God has called me to serve in Ushering in Christian Fellowship, only did I realized I can use this gift for the Glory of God as He wants me to use this gift to speak words of encouragement and even to make people happy and smile. Afterwards, when I begin tapping into music, I started playing the guitar. Few years later, it was so clear to me as well I can use music as a tool to sing about God, to the people around me, and to point out as well that music for God is a fun thing and an honorable thing to do.

Everyone, I would like to share with You today, how is God asking us to serve.

1) When I was in Form 1, I was called to serve the LORD. I could remember, The LORD only called me to come to church / CF, He wants me to first serve Him by my attendance. Let’s face it, how can one possibly serve the LORD, when He / She does not come to church / YTM? How can one possibly serve the country, if let say he / she is not the citizen of the country?

2) God instructed us to LOVE Him. It is to follow Him, it is to deny ourselves, take up our cross daily and follow Him. To simplify this, we can only be God’s servants and children, when we choose to obey Him. Now, is there something today God is asking you to do?

3) When God calls us to serve, He actually wants us to engage with other people. You see, when we serve in everything we do in Church / Christian Fellowship / YTM, it’s all about people and caring for them - fellowship and doing things out of LOVE. Part of loving God is to love people, think about it for a moment, if we say we love God and just stay at home - does nothing. Is that true LOVE? When God ask us to LOVE, the simple things we can at least start by doing is to learn to obey and respect our parents, give thanks to God, care and be nice to our friends and the list goes on. But friends, until and unless we know how to do these, we will not be effective in serving God in another level.

4) God wants you to serve by volunteering. When there is a particular ministry in church that needs help and you are moved by the Spirit, will you do it? When you have the skills to serve in ministry, will you volunteer to be a servant and serve? Servant might sound like a degrading word but certainly not when it refers to the LORD we trust in and LOVE - who is in fact, our servant King.

As far we are concerned, God wants us to serve and He is more concern with the input rather than the output, for the output is never our job but the work of God. Will you trust God today as You make a decision to serve the LORD? The call to be a Christian is the call to be a servant, will you heed this call today?

- Johnson Khor

Image taken from:
http://adetelur.blogdetik.com/2010/07/21/82/
http://www.fteleaders.org/pages/prospective-students
http://caravanofdreams.wordpress.com/2011/04/08/whisperings-of-the-heart-by-stewart-bitkoff/