One of my favorite ways to worship the Lord is through music...unfortunately, I am a terrible singer. My family swears I'm tone deaf, although I'm not THAT bad but I'm definitely not gifted in that way. God often teaches me things through listening to worship music.
This past week I heard Chris Tomlin's song..."I Will Follow." I have heard this song a million times and I actually wrote a blog post about it about 2 years ago. It's one of my favorite worship songs, but when I heard it this past week God really spoke to me on one particular part of the song.
Part of the chorus says "Who You love, I'll love and who You serve, I'll serve and if this life I lose, I will follow You" When I heard that, I began asking myself "Do you really LOVE the way God loves, do you really SERVE the way He serves?"Over and over, I felt like God was saying "Magan evaluate yourself...you do a great job of acting like you really LOVE people and serve them, but do an attitude check. Do you really LOVE people who hurt you, or do you act like you do, but "secretly" have an attitude about it. Do you SERVE people even when they do nothing for you? It's not about getting something in return...its about glorifying MY name and making me famous." Wow! He's right...my attitude towards people who don't necessarily do me the way I think they should is not always great. I do like to serve people, but do I always do it with a grateful and cheerful heart? I was really convicted.
His word says "If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and a servant of ALL" (Mark 9:35) and "As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's varied grace." (1 Peter 4:10) It also says to "serve the Lord with gladness." (Psalm 100:2) This means with a happy heart & with love. Speaking of love, He does not call us to love only those who treat us right, or those who we choose to love. In fact, one of His greatest commands is to "LOVE one another" (John 15:12 Matthew 22:39, & 1 John 4:11) This seems so simple, yet it's not. It's one of the hardest things. Sometimes I don't understand why I have to LOVE people who hurt me or treat me the way I think I should be treated. Well, it's because HE loves ME and I don't deserve it. He died on the cross for MY sins. He calls us to take up our cross daily and FOLLOW him. Not when it's easy, not when we want to, but daily...and this means showing people love and grace, just like He did for us when he died on the cross. This is something I know I struggle with. It's easy to serve and love people I don't know...but what about people who I do know. It's not about what I want or what I can get out of something....it's about a LOVE far greater that I will ever comprehend. Jesus gave his life for ME so I could LIVE for him...and this means sucking up my pride and my selfishness to LOVE and SERVE like he does, even when "I" don't want to.
We all have those people in our lives. Who is that difficult person to love and serve? WHO will YOU LOVE and SERVE today? That's the question I'm asking myself today, ask yourself the same.
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