Serving from a different perspective

Where do I start???? Ok I will lay it out there, when we
found out we were going to be helping out at a school this month I wasn’t
excited at all. “Teach kids English” I thought, I struggle with English myself,
how am I going to teach them English? I had a bad attitude going into the
meeting with our contact at the school we are working at. And let me tell
you…it got even worse when I found out how much time we would be working and
then living in the dorms with boys on top of that. I was thinking when will I
get time for myself and I remember justifying by saying, I need my personal
time to spend with God every day, trying to push it off on God. Leaving  our debrief in South Africa I really
wanted to get a lot of alone time with God to seek Him out and to grow in my
relationship with Him.  I also
wanted to dig in and see what He wants me to do in two and a half months when I
get back home. I wasn’t happy. I was tired after hours of travel and really
didn’t want to deal with it.

 

A pastor and his wife run the school here in Kuala Lumpur
and many teachers and students are Believers. Most of the students are Muslim,
Buddhist and Hindu so we were told that we couldn’t speak to any of the
students about God at all. This was really hard to hear.  What we failed to realize was that God
was trying to teach us how to serve Him through our actions.  How would we love these kids even
though we couldn’t talk to them with words about Jesus?  What kind of  attitudes would we have each day?  How would we treat and act towards each other?  And basically how would we obediently
follow Christ through a challenging envirnoment.

I titled my blog “Serving from a different
perspective”.  For the first eight
months of this mission trip  I have
been able to tell people about Jesus all around the world. And then I come to
this school and I’m told I cannot do that here. But the beauty of it all is
that I have grown so much more in making sure that my life reflects the life of
Jesus.  I pray that when the
students and staff look at me that they see a difference in how I live my life
and that they don’t see me, but instead, they see Jesus. This actually applies
to most of you who are reading this blog, if you’re in full time ministry or
just working your regular job. If you are a follower of Jesus, you are called
to serve Him in everything you do. 
You are called to be a lamp that reflects the light of Jesus to every
person that you meet. We all need to stop being selfish and start living for
Him. We need to start putting others ahead of ourselves. It could be doing
mindless administrative office work as a missionary in Kuala Lumpur all day
long.  But maybe the work we are
doing here is a complete, and much needed, blessing to the people who work
here, who knows???  The one thing I
know for sure is that God does know. 
So ask Him how He wants you to serve Him in your life and be obedient to
His voice.

So as God has been teaching me to serve Him in all that I do
here, we had three days off over the Chinese New Year, while the school was
closed. I was totally excited to get some rest and get some really good alone
time with God to ask Him what He wants me to do when I get back to the States.
Team Awaken 2010 needed 2 people to go with them to help out at on orphanage
for two of the days we had off. I remembered that God is teaching me that it is
not my time and I need to serve Him in every moment. I was really waiting for
one of my teammates to volunteer since Tiffany said she was already going, even
though I knew it needed to be me. I said yes.  I knew that was what God wanted. He knows what I need and
sitting in an air-conditioned coffee shop trying to seek Him is not how I’m
going to find Him.