“We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers, remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you,” (1 Thessalonians 1:2-4, ESV)

This passage from 1 Thessalonians holds three keys to serving God. When we learn to leverage these keys, we discover that we can continue when the way grows wearying or frustrating. Serving God by serving people brings with it a whole host of issues. We rub each other wrong, and our flesh expresses itself through our irritated responses to one another. We fight for dominance and wrestle with selfish ambition. We lobby for our great ideas and fuss when they get put aside. Instead of getting caught up in these traps, we can consider what gets us started, drives us, and sustains us.

Faith starts us because God chooses us. God has already taken the first step in renewing our personal relationship with him by sending Jesus to pay for our offenses against God. Jesus bridged the gap between God and us. We simply respond by saying yes to God and begin a life anchored by faith. Walking by faith means that sometimes we don’t see all the steps we need to take; instead, we only see the next one and then the next one. Serving God is an expression of our faith in him, and faith is an important key in believing that our service is not in vain.

Love for the Lord is the engine that rumbles beneath all we do and drives us forward. At times the labor involved in serving God surprises us. Hardships happen, and we wonder if something so noble can bring such difficulties. But this life is not without trials, even when we serve with pure motives. We need to have something that keeps up moving forward when the way grows long and scattered with boulders and steep inclines. Love for God is the key to pressing on when discouragement comes.

Hope fuels us and gives us endurance. We find our hope in Jesus, who is steadfast and true, strong and mighty, and ever-present. When we grow weary in service, we can fix our eyes on Jesus. He is our hope. He doesn’t disappoint. Because sanctification is a process, we wrestle with the ways of our “self” and must carry our cross. While this battle within rears its ugly head from time to time, we can stay the course by allowing steadfast hope to build endurance in us. Hope in Jesus is the key that fuels our service.

Throughout my life, I’ve served God by serving the Church through my involvement in various ministries, from children’s church to youth group to women’s ministries. My involvement in each area ministered to my heart and helped me mature. Maturity came through diligence to honor God through every issue each ministry brought as I focused on faith, love, and hope.

Streams in the Desert – January 16

• 202316 Jan

And there arose a great storm (Mark 4:37).

Some of the storms of life come suddenly: a great sorrow, a bitter disappointment, a crushing defeat. Some come slowly. They appear upon the ragged edges of the horizon no larger than a man’s hand, but, trouble that seems so insignificant spreads until it covers the sky and overwhelms us.

Yet it is in the storm that God equips us for service. When God wants an oak He plants it on the moor where the storms will shake it and the rains will beat down upon it, and it is in the midnight battle with elements that the oak wins its rugged fibre and becomes the king of the forest.

When God wants to make a man He puts him into some storm. The history of manhood is always rough and rugged. No man is made until he has been out into the surge of the storm and found the sublime fulfillment of the prayer: “O God, take me, break me, make me.”

A Frenchman has painted a picture of universal genius. There stand orators, philosophers and martyrs, all who have achieved pre-eminence in any phase of life; the remarkable fact about the picture is this: Every man who is pre-eminent for his ability was first pre-eminent for suffering. In the foreground stands that figure of the man who was denied the promised land, Moses. Beside him is another, feeling his way — blind Homer. Milton is there, blind and heart-broken. Now comes the form of one who towers above them all. What is His characteristic? His Face is marred more than any man’s. The artist might have written under that great picture, “The Storm.”

The beauties of nature come after the storm. The rugged beauty of the mountain is born in a storm, and the heroes of life are the storm-swept and the battle-scarred.

You have been in the storms and swept by the blasts. Have they left you broken, weary, beaten in the valley, or have they lifted you to the sunlit summits of a richer, deeper, more abiding manhood and womanhood? Have they left you with more sympathy with the storm-swept and the battle-scarred?
–Selected