I just got back from being on holidays - my wife and I and two friends spent some time in Mexico.  While we were there we met and chatted with a really likeable guy named Ellio.  Ellio worked at the place where we stayed selling massages on the beach and every day he would wander around trying to convince people that their vacation was incomplete unless they had a 50 minute massage.

Two times he came by where we were strewn across the beach (I was nose first into Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers” covered in SPF 60 so I wouldn’t lose my perfect shade of pale) and tried to convince us to sign up.  I wasn’t very interested in spending the money even though I carry stress in my shoulders for two reasons: a) because I’m cheap and b) because I have a wife, who in spite of her small hands can rescue me from the knots in my back (I think it’s in our marriage vows somewhere…).

Even though he didn’t make a sale on us, both times Ellio came by he sat down with us and chatted for about ten minutes or so.  We had opportunity to talk about our families and where he (and we) were from and what we did for work and so on.

After he left the second time my wife mused what Ellio might be able to do if he were to come to Canada - he was clearly a bright guy who was personable and easy to like.  We chatted about how if he could just get his foot in the door somewhere he could do a myriad of things - specifically in the area of sales.  He had a great grasp of English and like I said, was super personable - a man of high energy, very persuasive.

I haven’t really spent the last week thinking much about Ellio, but in remembering our conversations with him and my initial impression of him I’ve been thinking a bit about how we put so much emphasis on the way a message is delivered.  It’s a huge part of our culture - we want things to be witty or shiny and impressive.  And that’s not necessarily a bad thing - as a preacher I’m always trying to hone my communication skills, working at how to efficiently and effectively present my message.

What I’ve been reminded of recently though (dating back before my holidays and even meeting Ellio) is that as good as it is to work on the way we present our message as Christians we must not become so focused on the how of the message that we lose sight of the greater importance of what the message is.

Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 2 that he did not come “with eloquence or superior wisdom” and that his “message and preaching were not with wise and persuasive words” but rather based on God’s power.  In the chapter before he reminds his readers that they were not called because of their wisdom or influence, but that God works through the weak things of this world to shame the wise so that no one might boast before Him.  In fact he exhorts “let him who boasts boast in the Lord.”

It’s been a good reminder for me that while I ought to work at doing my craft well, my concern should not be about presentation as much as it should be about content - God’s message of truth speaks and has power of its own and that anything that is accomplished through me is a result not of my own intelligence and hard work, but through the grace of Him who has chosen to use me.

Reg

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During the Christmas Break we had a warm spell that lasted for a couple of days where I live.  Prior to this reprieve from the cold, what I didn’t know was that my downspout leading from my garage had clogged full of leaves (apparently good home owners check this during the fall) and had slowed the flow of water.  As the weather got colder, the backlog of water froze in my eaves.

When the warm spell rolled through, this ice began to melt and the excess water started spilling over the edge and running down the wall of my house.  This, I noticed.  So on one of my days off I hacked out the remaining ice in the eaves and waited for the downspout to melt out so that I could unclog it.  It did and then I did, giving me (and my eaves) a nice fresh start for this cold front that has emerged in the early weeks of January.

It was a nice metaphor for me I think, to spend some time contemplating the freshness of a new year - a new start.  Coupled with some previous thoughts on the beauty that is God’s grace, I’ve had a few thoughts emerge lately.

God’s grace sets us free in the sense we are forgiven, but that doesn’t mean we don’t carry the consequences of our previous actions.  Growing and learning from our mistakes is essential but doesn’t always let us completely start over.  Grace is not a reset button - consequences sometimes are not erased.

Given that, while we are not who we once were (Paul writes “you were this way but now you are like this” [Eph 5:8; 1 Cor 6:9-11])  there are some things we inevitably will have to carry forward as a result of our choices and actions.

All the more reason that we ought to be careful how we live in the present.  Just because we are in Christ and know that forgiveness is ours, doesn’t mean we ought to live recklessly, cutting corners (even for the sake of the kingdom).

On the one hand we are being observed by others, as we are to be a living example of what God is doing.  On the other hand, we are not people who are given a special armour of protection that makes us immune to consequence.  The call is to be more like Jesus - that we would be holy as He is holy [1 Peter 1:15]

I’m not sure where you are at today - maybe you’re in the midst of a warm spell, allowing you to un-clutter your life of the things that you have let build up.  Be refreshed knowing that Christ does indeed set you free, but go forward knowing that freedom has responsibility attached to it - a responsibility to continue to pursue Jesus in all aspects of life.

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For a lot of years I went on record as being somebody who hated Christmas.  Hated is probably too strong a word (but then again I like to get reactions out of people, so I probably used it for that reason alone) because I really do love Christmas - at least with regards to what it really is all about.  I don’t even really dislike all of the cultural trappings of Christmas (even though most of them we could definitely do without) - I like spending time with family, I like giving gifts and even though publicly I will deny this, I don’t even mind singing Christmas carols from time to time.

To an extent, Christmas as we know it has been tainted by consumerism and marketing.  It can quickly become about the pursuit of acquiring whatever the newest “cool” thing is, which is something we definitely are not immune to in Christian culture.  Being driven by the need to acquire (and the sense of entitlement that sometimes goes with it), the season which is supposed to most exemplify peace and harmony among men quickly dissolves to frustration, resentment and disappointment.

I find myself wrestling more and more with what Christmas is and what Christmas should be in my own life, trying to find the balance of celebrating with the world while also ensuring that the beauty of the meaning, namely the Incarnation, isn’t drowned out.

The folks over at Advent Conspiracy seem to be headed in the right direction and while I haven’t had the chance to fully immerse myself in the book (I’m too cheap to order books until I get free shipping…) I’m trying to allow what I’ve been exposed to thus far work a subtle shift in my thinking.  Instead of viewing Christmas (the real Christmas) in terms of the gift of Jesus (which is completely true by the way), I am finding myself thinking less about presents and more about presence.  The Incarnation needs to be the primary model for celebrating Christmas - that as God was gracious enough to draw near to humanity - to dwell among them, so that ought to be our goal during this season.  To draw near and dwell among one another - in love.

This year for the first time since I was in university (way back in the 90’s) I am taking a week of holidays during Christmas.  No responsibilities or tasks - nothing but time that I can spend with those I care about.  Not gonna lie, I’m looking forward to lots of time spent with my wife, maybe making her watch the next two instalments of Lord of the Rings (she wants to skip ahead to Return of the King, but I won’t let that happen - Two Towers is integral to the story) and beginning the hard work of being less concerned with stuff and more concerned people.

So beginning this Christmas I’m going to stop complaining and relieve myself of the burden of things I cannot change and (hopefully) slowly, subtlety make changes in the places where I have control, i.e, - myself.  My hope is that as I get better at it that the way I celebrate Christmas will have a bigger impact in the lives of other people - and not just the ones I know personally.

I have a long way to go, but in the meantime, I sincerely hope you all have a very Merry Christmas, blessed with the presence of those you love and of the God who loves you.

Related posts:

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At the church where I work, we have been walking through the Gospels (in as chronological a way as we can) in an effort to just spend some time watching and listening to Jesus.  As people who call ourselves followers of Jesus, the things He taught and the things that were (and are) close to His heart also ought to be close to ours.

I also had the opportunity this past week to preach at a rural church in Arkona.  It was such a great experience to be able to go and worship with a group of people whose way of doing church was a little bit different than my home church.  On one level it was quite nostalgic as it reminded me so much of the church I grew up in, but it was also quite refreshing to be able to visit and be a part of a community who is faithfully serving God in the context that they find themselves in.

I shared an illustration in my sermon (which as it turns out, I tend to share a lot) that I’ve spent some time the last couple of days thinking about.  When I was a kid, I loved my sister.  I still do actually - I love both of them.  But the way that my love for my older sister got lived out was two fold.  On the one hand, anything she told me to do, I would go ahead and do it.  If she needed something, I was the guy who could help her out.  Now of course being a sister, she soon found ways to abuse this power - making me do the menial things she didn’t want to, or making me do ridiculous things like wear a bag on my head.  I wasn’t a bright kid, I was just happy to be there, so I obediently did what I was told…

The other way that I would demonstrate my love for my sister was by mimicking everything that she did.  In hindsight, this probably got tiresome for her and was likely what led her to do things like tell me to wear a bag as a hat…  But regardless, whatever she would do or was engrossed in, I felt compelled to also do.  If she hugged my mom, I had to hug my mom.  If she needed a glass of water, I was suddenly very thirsty and also had to have a drink of water.  If she wanted to read, I wanted to read, and so on and so on and so on.  Everywhere she went, I was several steps behind her, shadowing her every move.

Here is where all those different ideas have converged in my brain.  If we are actually serious about following Jesus, we ought to have similar habits as I did when I was a kid with my sister.  We should be listening for what Jesus has to say, but also - and here’s where I struggle more - we ought to be watching what Jesus does and be mimicking His moves, walking in His footsteps, copying how He loved and lived.

This is obviously not a new idea to me or to anyone.  But more and more as I try to make this a reality in my life, I’m beginning to also sense that this should be connected to how we do church.  We live in a copycat society that wants to find the latest success story and then reproduce in our lives and context.  Think about the radio - as soon as one person has a hit song, three or four bands that sound eerily similar suddenly break into the market - saturating the airwaves and occasionally making my ears bleed.  As Christians, and especially as people who are involved in ministry, our tendency is to do the same.  We find a new way that church is being done, and is showing signs (at least based on our cultural assumptions) of success and we instinctively try to figure out how to mimic it.  We go from conference to conference for the latest trend or fad that we can bring home to our church hoping to spark some kind of success.  We find a speaker or rock star pastor that we feel a connection to and then try to be just like them in the way we lead or speak.

Now don’t misunderstand me - I’m not disparaging these folks or their churches for the ways that God is using them.  And at times, there are probably some helpful principles we are able to glean from their experience.  That’s all a part of learning from one another.  But I wonder if we spend most of our time trying to learn from what other people (who we look up to) are doing, and trying to be just like them, when in reality, we ought to be learning from and trying to be just like Jesus.

The more I read the Gospels the more I notice that He doesn’t tend to operate via sharp looking programs or trying to appeal to a particular demographic.  He basically operates by being obedient to the Father, through relationship with people, fuelled by love, compassion and grace.

I guess what I’m wondering at times is why we, why I, have trouble mimicking that.

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This is largely coming out of personal experience and a thought that I’ve been cultivating the last couple of days and even taught at youth this week.  It is really just the flip side of my entry back in June entitled “When Jesus Wants to Rebuild Our Core” but it has become a living example in the midst of the congregation I worship with.

A while ago we talked about moving into a new neighbourhood - selling our old building downtown and hiking up the street a few km into a residential area.  It has been a long process for sure, but this is the week that it all began to happen.  Last Sunday was our last service at the old building (which I missed because in a moment of backslidden heathenism I found myself in Indianapolis watching my Colts dominate a much inferior Giants’ team [apologies to my wife who is a Giants' fan…]) and conversely, this week is our first service in the new building.  It’s an incredibly exciting time for us, not just because there is a sense of newness in the change but also because there is opportunity for us as a community of faith to embrace the mission of Jesus in a largely residential area filled with all sorts of families and circumstances.

But as is the case whenever we move from one location to another, we don’t find ourselves immediately in pristine environments.  For the next few months we will be renovating the basement to make it more useable and in the meantime the staff finds itself in temporary offices, ministry leaders find themselves using make-shift rooms and for the moment, everywhere you look there seems to be clutter of some kind.  It is certainly not the ideal situation for us, nor is it what we dream church and ministry will look like - but in the immediate [albeit temporal] moment, this is where we find ourselves.  Puttering through the mess, working towards a fully functional building that we can use, not only for ourselves but also for the betterment of the community we now find ourselves in.  Some of the work we will do ourselves and some of the work we will be hiring experts to come in and rebuild and renovate.

This whole process, staring me in the face this week as I’ve gotten settled into my cozy temporary office, has been a beautiful picture of redemption.  Taking something that is broken and not functioning the way we envisioned it and working towards repairing it and making it what we dreamed it could be.

I feel blessed to be living and working in this living parable because this is exactly who God is and what He wants to do (and keep doing) in my life and in your life.  He comes alongside all of us who are broken and not functioning the way He envisions and He begins working [through the Spirit] towards repairing us and making it what He knows and dreams we can be.  It’s the story we see time and time again in Scripture - God using broken vessels to become great ambassadors of His kingdom.  Peter went from one who denied Christ to one who persevered in his faith even unto death.  Saul went from leading the charge in trying to destroy the Christian faith to becoming Paul, leading the way to bringing the Gospel to those who hadn’t heard it yet, planting church after church after church.

I’m excited about what this coming year holds for us at church.  I’m excited for the way that God is going to move, calling us to become a relational influence among those in our neighbourhood, blessing them as we live out the kingdom among them.  I’m excited about the process of change in our building, that as we see areas renovated we will be able to see those spaces used for His glory.  But I’m also excited to see the process of redemption continuing in my own life, knowing that it will take some effort from me but will also require the hand of God at work behind the scenes, changing me - redeeming me - to become more like Jesus.  I have a long way to go yet, but I know that He who began a good work in me is faithful to complete it.  I pray that this is your story too - that you pursue Jesus in such a way that you allow God to change and redeem who you are and become who you can be for His glory.

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As I aged (and believe me, I have) I have continued to be a pretty avid reader although my tastes have deepened somewhat and I find that I read less stories about equine allergies.  I find that now I read more books that wrestle with big ideas  whether they relate to theology or business or church history.  But the one thing I’ve noticed (and maybe we can pin this on Donald Miller somehow) is that I can’t read these sorts of books exclusively.  I keep finding myself gravitating back to books that operate through narrative.  There is something fascinating about travelling along with a character as he/she encounters and overcomes conflict and trial to achieve a goal of some sort.

At church we have been preaching through the gospels in a chronological sequence. Simply put, we’ve been following Jesus.  WIthout a doubt it has been one of my favourite processes in not just my pastoral but also my Christian life.  Watching Jesus and learning from His example has been pretty incredible - so much different than developing an idea and trying to proof text it through Scripture.

Story speaks to us.  And while Miller takes the time to help us think through what elements make a good story and how we can add them to our lives (to make our lives say something worthwhile), I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the big story we see in Scripture.  I am constantly blown away by the common threads I see emerge throughout the entire Bible - that as the individual books are written by different men at different times, we can see (so plainly) in the grand narrative of the entire text, a consistent thread between the God of all Creation and His interaction with humanity.  The big story tells of God overcoming the fall of humanity; redeeming and rescuing through covenant and relationship.  So many times in both the Old Testament and the New, we hear the voice of God calling people into this covenant: “I will be your God and you will be my people.”  For me this week as I’ve been reflecting on this one common thread (of many we see in Scripture) I have been humbled as I remember that the work of Christ is not simply a free pass from judgment, but rather an invitation into a new (and abundant) life.  To submit my life to Jesus and follow after Him means entering into covenant and relationship with the God of Creation and this means not just receiving but also giving back into the relationship.

When you choose to follow Jesus it turns Scripture from simply being a historical narrative to becoming your narrative.  The story we read becomes our story; not just our spiritual heritage, but truth we see in our own lives - that God is in the process of redeeming and rescuing through covenant and relationship - and we proclaim this truth to the world through our lives.  God is at work writing His story - a story of relationship with broken people.  As I continue to follow Jesus and put down the things of my old nature and embrace His offer of abundant life, my desire is not that I would be known for the things that I have accomplished, but rather that I would be known as one who counted God as my God and was counted as one of His people.

Reg

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We live in a strange time.  I’m not complaining about it mind you, there are plenty of things in our day and age that I love.  Whether it’s our ability to travel to the other side of the world with relative ease or the fact that on my phone I’m able to check email, surf the net and use GPS (never mind actually making calls).  We are a brilliant people, shrinking the world, increasing our ability to communicate and tackling all sorts of the world’s problems with things like medical advancements.

I wonder sometimes to myself if that is part of our problem.  Now, don’t misunderstand me here - I’m not looking to become Amish (I think I can say that without offending anyone since the Amish probably don’t read internet blogs that much…) and turn my back on all that we have accomplished as a people - because let’s be honest, for all the horror we’ve done as a species, we’ve also done a lot of remarkable and incredible things.  But as our ingenuity grows and we continue to accomplish more and more, I wonder if we have become overly arrogant as a people group?  I was reading the story of the Tower of Babel today (Genesis 11:1-9) and was struck by how quickly people get full of themselves - “Let us make a name for ourselves” - we tend to always think we know best it seems.

Now I’m not overly concerned about us building a tower into the heavens, and I’m not looking to stop progress around us.  But as I’ve been thinking about this human tendency, I’ve thought a lot about how this seeps into the church and into Christian thinking.

We’re a part of a generation (I’ll throw myself in here too even though I’m pretty old) that is quick to dismiss where we come from.  Especially over this last decade - as Christians we’ve been quick to point out all of the flaws and shortcomings of the churches we grew up in, and the Christian way of life we were born into.  And some of it is justifiable, but some of it is just because we’re arrogant.  Of course WE know better - THEY missed the point and did things wrong.  Surely WE must know how to interpret Scripture better than THOSE who came before us, and WE most certainly know how to develop a better church model.  I wonder if we’re not essentially saying, “Let us make a name for ourselves”?

Two thoughts have come out of this for me:  first, let’s not be so worried about what we want or how we desire to be seen - in short, let us make a name for Him long before we try to make a name for ourselves.  We can think what we want about the church of the last hundred years, but God was at work in it, accomplishing His will.

And secondly, I get that we need to make changes as time goes on and cultures shift.  What works in downtown Chicago isn’t going to work in rural Manitoba.  We will need to adapt at times.  God may be calling us to plant a new church (in my own life I can see evidence that God may be opening doors in that direction, so this is directed at me as much as anyone) or start a new ministry or whatever.   If that’s the case, then get at it.  But as we continue in being a generation who discovers fresh expressions of what it looks like to live out the call of Jesus in our lives, couldn’t we also be a generation who models grace as we do it?  Instead of constantly tearing down where we came from, why not affirm the good?  Why not point to what God has done, not just in the last few decades but throughout the course of human history?  Because here’s the thing:  in 15 years some fresh college grad is going to want to start a new kind of church because of the blind spots and shortcomings in how we do things.  And some of it will be legitimate and some of it will simply be preference - but when that day comes, I’m pretty sure we’re going to hope he does it with some grace.  I say we begin showing the next generation what that looks like now.

I believe we live in an exciting time that God is doing some incredible things in.  I’m excited to see the church pick up and embrace the kingdom value in numerous areas of social justice.  I’m energized by a generation’s desire to be missional in building relationships with people outside the church walls.  My earnest prayer is that as we continue to pursue Jesus in these ways, that we wouldn’t be out to make a name for ourselves, or to get so caught up in what we are doing that we dismiss all that came before us and forget that it is only through Him and for Him that we accomplish anything.

Reg

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This verse has been killing me lately.
Here’s why:

I love myself more than God sometimes.
I may not say it.
I may not even consciously think it.
But my actions show otherwise.

I’ve been faced with multiple decisions in the past few weeks where I realized just how much I love myself more than God.

And if you think about your life, maybe you might see the same thing.
Maybe not though. Maybe you’re sanctified.
I’m not quite there yet. Still on my way.

All I know is that I need to take careful heed to myself; to daily put my heart in check and actively seek to love the Lord more than myself.

It really does change the way I do things.
I need to put God’s will before my own.
I need to put holiness before my sinful desires.
I need to put other people before myself.
I need to care for the orphan, the poor, and the needy in my own midst.
I need to have compassion on people who I wouldn’t normally have a heart for.
I need to see myself and others through God’s eyes.
I need Jesus Christ.

I hope for the next week, this verse eats at your conscience. I hope that it breaks your heart like it did mine. I hope that through this verse, Jesus can turn your heart from yourself to the Living God.

PJ

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Recently in my neighbourhood there has been much talk regarding older, rundown buildings in the city where I live and their replacement - for good or for bad.  I don’t often enter into the conversations regarding these older buildings for lots of reasons.  First of all, emotions are running high on both sides of the conversation and also, there are lots of politics tied in to it all.  I leave the political conversations for my wife to handle as she’s the news savvy member of our household.  My conversation portfolio revolves around other issues, like consumption of cheese and why dogs are better pets than cats - you know, important stuff…

That being said, it would be inaccurate to say that I haven’t spent some time thinking about about the issue and even forming my own opinion regarding it.  Here is where I hesitate; my opinion could be wrong and I’m not even that interested in debating it with others - but where I have landed on this isolated situation has provoked in me some spiritual thoughts.  Not that the situation is itself spiritual, but rather it has (for me anyway) served as a concrete illustration about a trait that I see in human nature - and specifically a trait I see in me.  It has simply been a springboard; a real-life situation that made me think of something completely unrelated.  Call it a parable.  I can’t stress this enough because it can be so easy to jump into the debate over the value of keeping older buildings (of which there is much) or not, and I don’t wish for us to do that here - plenty of other forums for that.  So, if you know what I’m referring to and have strong feelings one way or another, I challenge you to show restraint and not debate it here.  If you have to send me a Facebook message to get something off your chest, feel free.  My response will likely be: “Tell my wife - I need to go eat cheese.”

I find myself with a unique perspective on this whole issue, as I work in a downtown church near where all of this hubbub is happening.  What is unique is that the church I work in has been designated as a Heritage Building - a designation which some people were lobbying to give to these buildings that are being taken down.  I love the idea of Heritage Buildings (I went to a Pioneer Village with my whole family during Father’s Day and marvelled at where we have come as a people) but I would never want to have ownership of one again.  We are in the process of selling our building - partly because of the cost of maintaining such an old structure (and the limitations of what we are allowed to do to the building) is just too much - especially since there is no financial assistance.  We like the look of an old building but nobody wants to foot the bill of maintaining it.

So I sympathize with those who desired to see our downtown core preserved (I understand the value of history) but at the same time I sympathize with the other side.  As long as I can remember (and I’m an old dude) these old, rundown buildings have been an eyesore on our downtown core.  Historical value yes, but certainly nothing to be proud of, as many have sat vacant and condemned for a long time with nobody doing much to correct their state.  And I guess that’s what puzzles me the most - where were these voices 15-20 years ago, crying for them to be fixed and not removed?  Maybe there were there and I didn’t know of them.

Here is the spiritual thought that has struck me over the past couple weeks as this has all unfolded:  how much of the broken, rundown sections of my soul have I neglected to clean up and restore?  And as I strive to follow after Jesus and He asks me to let go of the things of my past - because they are broken and rundown - how loudly do I protest?  Do I argue that they are just part of my identity?  That they should be allowed to be preserved because I have historical and emotional attachment to them?  They give me “character”?

I could have easily gone a different direction with this - the idea that Jesus is the one who restores the broken and condemned and makes it better.  Even though this is true, part of following Jesus is about pursuing holiness, and that pursuit requires that I let go of certain parts of who I am and what I do in the process of sanctification.  It’s not easy to do - as people we find loopholes and excuses to hang onto all sorts of our sinfulness.  How beautiful it is that Jesus is calling us to something higher; to something more.  How amazing that He is making us something new and better than we were in our broken, sinful state.

“Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17)

I’m not saying there wasn’t and isn’t a place to cry out for the preservation of older, historical buildings in our communities.  There probably is.  But in our lives, as we claim to pursue Jesus, let that pursuit be our priority even when it means letting go our our past and our sinfulness.  May our lives be characterized by these words of the apostle Paul:

“Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it.  But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:13, 14)

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I had a crazy busy week a few weeks back. I spent an extended weekend (which I loved) at a youth retreat and then came home dawg tired. Something you need to know about youth retreats—they’re not vacations for the youth leaders. Kudos to any volunteer youth leader who keeps doing this. They sacrifice time, energy, money (or a chance to make extra), family time… the list goes on.

So, to keep this short, tongue in cheek—I had less to complain about than Johnny (a youth leader in his 40s) who was back to work the night we got home.

But still, I was dead tired… and upon arriving home, I had one day to recoup before I was back in the saddle.

Wednesday and Thursday flew by as there was so much to do (gotta love those days). It wasn’t until Friday where I realized that I was holding onto something—resentment… anger… a few other emotions that aren’t my best suit.

It wasn’t because I felt overworked (I got over that feeling long ago when I was in college). No. My beef was the fact that I had spent so much time serving people and had no one serving me… that was, until I was in the coffee shop.

I love Tim Hortons. I love the smell. I love the rush of a coffee at anytime in the day. I love the atmosphere. But what I love the most is that I don’t have to do jack all. Are you getting where I’m going here?

The hardest place for me to be a life long servant… is when I’m expecting people to be there for my benefit. And here’s what usually happens when I expect that:
-When someone butts in front of me, I want to shank them in the neck
-When someone takes waaaay to long to order, I want to kick them in the rear.
-When the girl behind the till has to make coffee because of the influx of customers, I begin think less of her.

For all I know, her dad may be dying of cancer. Her mom might have just left home because of an abusive relationship she’s in. The girl behind the till might be pregnant and her boy might have just left her because she chose to keep the baby. And all I can think about is getting what I want and getting out.

Lets look at this a different way.
Jesus Christ came to serve. He taught his disciples how to serve. Never, not even once, have I observed Him telling us that we can have a day off when it comes putting other people before ourselves.

Because you can’t be a Christian 40 hours a week.
You can’t work overtime in the Kingdom and you’re always called to a higher standard.

My challenge to you: know what you’ve signed up to do as a Christian and just giver.
Giver when it’s easy, Giver when it’s tough.

Because that’s how Jesus did it.

-PJ

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