Here to Love

              It’s my second nature to look for ways to entertain myself. I’m betting it’s yours too. Our conversations revolve around it, our weekends are planned with it, and our money is spent on it. Sometimes even our reputations can be gauged on how tasteful, trendy, or knowledgeable we are related to the newest thing that’s got us talking.

 

           Entertainment isn’t a bad thing: it can make us laugh, keeps the kids smiling, and gives the rest of us something to do on a Friday night. Entertainment can come in many shapes and sizes. But it’s when we make a decision based on how to only please ourselves that leads to sour entertainment. It’s the heart motive behind it: when my focus is to only seek out my own happiness and desires.  

            When my life becomes about me getting what I want.

 

If I’m not there to serve, why am I there?

 This has been a question on the forefront of my mind whenever I find myself making a decision on how to spend my time…or my money. How will I entertain myself on a Friday night? How willing I am to share my resources? Will I choose to get my priorities met, or give someone else my time?  I don’t always have a willing spirit to share what I’ve got.

I’m reading a book called ‘Revolution in World Missions’ by K.P Yohannan, a missionary for India and director of Gospel for Asia. Yohannan speaks of his experience in wealthy America that I think relates:

“This ever-present blast of media disturbed me. For some reason, Americans seemed to need to surround themselves with noise all the time. Even in their cars, I noticed the radios were on even when no one was listening. Why do they always have to be either entertained or entertaining? I wondered. It was as if they were trying to escape from a guilt they had not yet defined or even identified.”

I’m not an artist, so here’s a picture with words. Sometimes my thoughts could look like a kid hiding in the back of a school bus with headphones and a hoodie pulled over my face; drowning the world out and wallowing in music to escape the reality around me—the reality that I’ve made life about myself, and it isn’t satisfying. It’s really left sad, alone, and with a sense of guilt for reasons I am unsure of.   

            What if guilt can be a good thing—a warning signal that tells us when we’ve begun to step outside of God’s path, the path that leads to true goodness? It’s like accidentally brushing your hand up against a hot stove—that initial jolt of knowing that something is wrong.

Before we realize that our hand is on the stove, being burnt…badly.   

           Here are words that really matter, are really true, and will outlast the world. Food is for the body, Scripture is for the soul:

“Whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Matthew 20:28

             The world has its own system for greatness: physical beauty, athletic skill, academic success, the list is long. We’re familiar with it, and if we don’t let Christ work in us daily to renew our mindset, we start to work for the top spot and assess others on where they fall.  

But real greatness is the one willing to be a servant; to be a slave to serving others. And when I say ‘real’ I mean a substance, something that is as much of a reality as the computer you read this from. If the Bible is true—then so is this real definition of greatness.   

              Love is serving. Love is fulfilling. Love is sacrifice—giving up what we’ve got.

               Looking to always please my own desires is not only exhausting, but can lead down a lonely road. When I take the focus off myself and put it on others, I’m more joyful . More content. Overall just...happier. The point is not so much that we should be serving, but that in serving is where we find true blessing. In a culture of abundance, sometimes this becomes a fact more than an application.   

All in all, I’ve been given so much.  But I don’t think God gave me much so I could spend my time, money, talents, whatever it is I’ve got…looking for ways to only please myself.

 

 A loving God grants abundance when He wants it shared.   

 

 

                                                                       And the question still needs an answer.

                                                           If I’m not there to serve others, why am I there?   

                                 

“For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as you love yourself.”   
                
 ~ Galatians 5:13-14