Serving the Lord... i always thought that this meant i had to spend every
split second looking for ways i could make my Heavenly Father happy and proud. Looking
for something to do or say to continuously praise Him and give Him thanks.
i really wanted to do all this.
Because i really love God, i really really wanted to
exploit all the possibilities there are in the world to let Him know.
But the truth is, that there was no real joy in all
this.
It made me tired even thinking about it.
i wanted to serve Him, yet it also made me feel very
uncomfortable.
i realized my ability to think of ways to serve Him
would never ever be enough.
Not good enough, not creative enough, …
i knew i would always come short. Big time.
And this made me feel very sad.
i did not understand the concept of serving the Lord.
And even though i realize i am most likely still not
grasping the whole concept of serving the Lord, i’d like to share the insight i
had today.
The Lord wants us to serve Him.
And He Himself will tell us what He’d like and when.
He does not want us to spend all our time and energy
trying to figure out what He needs us to do and then do all those things we can
come up with.
He simply wants us to wait for Him.
To be available to Him.
To be ready the second He speaks to us and asks
something of us.
He wants to be the One Who is revealing His will to
us.
i don’t have to be running around in my thought
circles in that little tiny mind of mine…
His ways are beyond what i can think or imagine. So
yes, of course i would fall short if i would try to figure out His will inside
the limits of my own thinking.
But today i had this picture of a scene:
A wealthy master,
surrounded by servants. And there was this one servant, who was continuously
doing what she though her master might want her to do. Whatever her mind was
thinking of that the master could want her to bring or clean or do, she would
do it.
So here she knocks on the door of the master’s office
and brings him a cup of coffee: “Sir, would you like a cup of coffee?”. She
places the cup of coffee on his desk. But as she walks out of the door she
realizes she did not know whether he wanted coffee and decides to go back to
the kitchen and also make him a cup of tea. Just a few minutes later she knocks
on the door again. “Sir, i thought you might not have wanted coffee, so here’s
also a cup of tea. Or would you rather have something else to drink? i could
also bring you some fresh water? Or perhaps a glass of wine?”
i guess in most cases the master would let her know
what he’d like to drink (that is, IF he was thirsty in the first place). That
way the servant would know what to bring him (or take away).
The master sips his coffee and the servant can leave
the room with a sense of satisfaction. Her master is content and she is glad,
relieved. But then as she steps out of the office she is feverishly looking for
something else to do to serve her master.
She is restless and decides to mop the floors. She
thought her master would really appreciate it. Fifteen minutes later the whole
floor in the hallway is wet. The servant stands up and looks satisfied at her
work. She is just about ready to go and find something else to do, as the
office door opens and the master screams as he falls flat.
The servant hastens to her master and keeps
apologizing, while in her head she keeps telling herself how stupid she is for
forgetting to warn him for the wet floor. But then again, she didn’t tell him
because she wanted to surprise him. She asks if the master is hurting anywhere
and helps him up. She tells herself she will not make this mistake again and
from now on she will be an even better servant.
Oh, i know i’ve been this servant so many times. Stuck
in my attempts to be the best servant i can possibly be. To surprise the Lord
with something special i wanted to do for Him to make Him proud of His servant.
And so many times i felt stupid, disappointed in myself. i can’t even begin to
count the many times the Lord must have (almost) tripped over something i tried
to do for Him, that wasn’t the right thing or the right time and ended up being
a roadblock in His way…
Today the Lord told me that this is not the way He
wants for us to serve Him.
He wants to use us. Yes. He wants us to do great works
for Him. Yes. But we don’t have to exhaust ourselves thinking of everything we
could do for Him. i never understood that.
The Lord has already predestined the good works we can
do for the glory of His Kingdom.
To me this always made me feel a bit like going on an egg
hunt. God had all those good works planned for me and i had to do my best to
find out what those good works were (just like looking for eggs in an egg hunt)
and then go about and do them. i must say this always made me tiresome and
exhausted and i felt frustration and disappointment when i could not figure out
what those good works were.
But God is not doing an egg hunt with us. He doesn’t
want to hide those good works so we waste our energy trying to find out what He
wants for us to do, only to grow weary.
He is our master. And He will let us know what He
wants, when He wants it.
Just like a master will ring the bell to call for his
servant and ask her to bring him a cuppa coffee just the way he likes it, when
he likes it, God will be letting us know what He would like us to do as well.
The Lord will be ringing the bell, asking for our
attention, when He has something for us to do. Our job in the meantime is to
listen for His call, do our usual, everyday life activities and make sure we
are at all times close enough to our Master to hear Him when He calls us.
Yes, waiting for His call can seem pointless or
boring. Just like the servant in the story you could be restless, boiling
inside, wanting to do something special for the Lord. You might want to surprise Him, amaze Him.
And just waiting for His call and doing what He is asking of you
(nothing less, but also nothing more) may seem too little, too easy, too
normal.
i understand. When you are amazed by God’s riches in
love and mercy, you want to do something great to express your gratitude to
Him. When His love touches your soul, you almost explode and can’t wait to set
something in motion to show the world the miracle of His unconditional, everlasting
love.
But the truth is, God knows your heart. He already
knows how amazed you are and how deep your gratitude goes. He knows.
God knows us as we are. Who we are right now. But also
who we’ve been and who we’re going to be. He knows what we are doing right now.
He knows what we’ve done in the past and He knows all about the things we will
be doing in times yet to come.
The Lord Himself prepared for us the good works He
wants us to do and the paths He wants us to take.
We cannot surprise Him.
And yes, that can make us sad. But it can also be a
great comfort to us.
Because sometimes we will fall short. Some things will
go wrong. Sometimes our words may come out all wrong and we will choose to do
the wrong things.
Then we may find comfort in knowing that the Lord
already knew where we’re heading, long before we realized something was off.
And He won’t be disappointed in us. Yes, we will make mistakes and those
mistakes will grieve our Master. But He won’t be surprised and therefore He
won’t be disappointed.
We cannot cause Him to love us any less by making our
worst mistake ever.
But we also cannot cause Him to love us any more by
achieving our greatest goal.
And i guess fully realizing that will bring us a lot
of peace of mind ;)
