I am sharing with you ways God has been transforming me on the World Race. I am going through all the things that I told myself and others that “I am Not” and how God showed me that “I am” and “I can” through Him.
Something I told myself is that I am not a servant. My friend described to me a person who is naturally gifted as a servant. He said, “You know when your drinking coffee with a group of friends and someone spills their drink. The person who is gifted in serving will jump up right away and grab napkins to clean it up”. I have seen this to be true on many occasions and in many other ways as well. People who are naturally gifted in serving delight in doing things for other people. It happens so naturally that they probably don’t know they are even doing it. I am not this way at all. When I choose to serve, I know I am serving. I discipline myself to serve.
Serving is something I always grew up with. My mom is an amazing servant and set a great example for my siblings and I. We were always at the church serving in various ways. I loved being around people, so I never complained about it. When I was just out of high school, I was being discipled by my youth pastor. He encouraged me to come to the church on my off days and volunteer. I had never considered that before, or even knew it was an option until he said that. So I began to do that. Any time it rained, I had a day off work because of my job. So I would come into the church and fold bulletins or organize the youth storage space.
About a year ago I met with the same pastor and he mentioned something about my top gifting. I started guessing what he was referring to and went down the list of all the things I believed I was gifted in. I went through them all and he was surprised I never guessed it. He thought I was most gifted in serving. I laughed and was confused why he would think that. I knew I wasn’t someone who naturally served like I’ve seen my other friends do. The pastor pointed out how often I served at the church. After thinking about it, I think I did it more as a social thing than a “I love to serve God and the body of Christ” thing. I went mostly because I was bored on my off days. Everyone else worked when it rained, so instead of being at home all bored, I went to the church to hangout with people. Volunteering for stuff was just my cover.
2 months ago I was in Latvia. I was on a team with a few people who were naturally gifted servants. They were alway on the look out for things that need to be done. I was not. We came together one time to discuss if we wanted a schedule for cleaning the kitchen, or if we should just clean up messes as we see it. Knowing myself and that I am never on the lookout for stuff like that, I suggested a schedule. The people who were servants wanted us to go with the flow and clean us as we saw the need. Both parties had good points and it was hard to come to a decision. I wanted them to be okay with working within a schedule and they wanted to see me step out my box and be looking for opportunities to serve all the time. My side ended up winning and we got a schedule, but God was teaching me something through this.
He was teaching me that I need to grow in this area serving. I can be an amazing servant when there are other people around and it’s fun. But when nobody is around and the job isn’t very appealing, I suck. Although I would now tell people I am a servant, I still have a ways to go in doing menial tasks when nobody is around. My teammates have set great examples for me and I don’t want to take advantage of them. I want to serve them as well.
Pray that I continue to look for ways to serve people and step out no matter the task.
