I didn’t know that I had made an idol out of serving God. I didn’t know it was possible. How could doing what He asks us to do ever be bad? How could that ever not be what He wants?
“Go and make disciples of all nations…” He says.
“Love your neighbor as yourself,” says Jesus.
“Go and proclaim the Kingdom of God.”
“Heal the sick.”
“Take up your cross and follow me.”
There is a lot to do!
Delivering clothes to families in need
And how beautiful that God chooses to use his people, broken from sin and shame but totally and completely redeemed, to spread His Kingdom. To spread peace. To let His never ending, never changing love and saving grace be known among the nations.
It’s true, this is what He has called us to. But it is not where we start.
Passing out Bibles to people who have never had one for themselves!
We start at His feet.
We start looking into His face with adoration, accepting the love He continually pours over us, and loving Him because of it. We love only because He first loved us (1 John 4) The love that we have for Him, and for every person in our lives that we are called to serve, comes only because He loved us first. And out of His huge and steadfast love for us, we have the ability to love Him and love others with His love.
I was forgetting that Jesus gave two commandments to us, summing up the entire law of the Old Testament which He perfectly fulfilled: Love the Lord your God with all of your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and love your neighbor as yourself (Luke 10).
All of our heart, all of our soul, all of our strength, and all of our mind, all of who we are is to be loving God. As I come to understand His love for me more and more, I can’t help but love Him with more and more of me. What a beautiful reaction that His love automatically fosters. My Savior, the One who died for the things I do for myself in my selfish, prideful sin, my Creator, the One who made every part of who I am and loves His creation, my Father, who calls me His daughter and brings me into His Kingdom as one to inherit His riches. His love is overwhelmingly good. This is the love that makes me want to serve Him.
In understanding His love, and in loving Him in return, I want to do all that I can to bring honor to His name, to see Him be glorified, to make His name known. And it’s not out of some checklist. It’s because I am so moved by the love He has for me, I want to love Him back with all that I am- my heart, soul, strength, and mind.
So as I’m here going around the world, and for the rest of my life wherever I am, I want to serve the people God places before me, whether its my team members, my host, or someone I meet in the street. I will serve them out of the love that I have for my God, and love them with the love that He has given me because He has first loved me. It would not be worth it for little ol’ Brie to travel around loving people with my own love- I would quickly run out, and it would probably end up being for selfish gain anyways. But, because we can love and serve out of His love for us, our love can make a difference. It can point people to the Perfect Father, the One True King, the Lord of the Ages, the God who sacrificed Himself so that we might live.
When we let our serving God become more important than our loving God, rather than serving Him because we love Him, we have put an idol before Him. And I never want to have anything higher on my mind than Jesus, the author and perfecter of life.
