This is Vacation Bible School week at New Hope. The theme has been Pandamania and the kids have had a great time. We have seen adults step up to the plate who have never helped in children’s ministry before! There are enough workers that we can move smaller groups of children through various “stations” and keep their short attention spans on schedule.
Ayron Reeves has tackled the job of directing the VBS week with great leadership skills. He has been impressive in fixing every problem that has arisen. We can be proud of him and all his volunteer staff. I’m sure there will be many stories of “kairos moments” that come from this VBS week, both from the kids and from the adult staff. God will surely bless faithfulness.
What stories can you share about this week’s Vacation Bible School?
Tags: service
Did you know there are slave-making ants that reside in the Amazon rain forest? Hundreds of these ants periodically swarm out of their nest to capture neighboring colonies of weaker ants. After destroying resisting defenders, they carry off cocoons containing the larvae of worker ants. When these “captured children” hatch, they assume that they are part of the family and launch into the tasks they were born to do. They never realize that they are forced-labor victims of the enemy.
Just as these little creatures are captives from the time of their birth, so we humans enter the world enslaved to sin and Satan. We act out what we think is ‘normal’ behavior, but leave a trail of broken debris in our wake. Only by turning to Christ and following His ways can we break free of the slavery of sin.
Joshua 24:15 says, “Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve”. We are all servants. Our decision, as Joshua pointed out, is not whether we will serve, but whom.
Tags: ants, service, sin, slavery
If your sense of self worth is based on anything other than God’s approval, you won’t serve with the right motives. True servants accept jobs that insecure people consider “beneath them”. Remember Jesus washing the feet of His disciples? Washing dirty feet of guests was one of the most demeaning jobs in that day.
Insecure people always worry about how they appear. They hide their weaknesses beneath layers of protective pride. The more insecure you are the more you need people to serve you, and the more you work for their acceptance. Psychologist Henry Nouwen says, “In order to be of service to others we have to die to them; that is, we have to give up measuring our meaning and value by the yardstick of others…thus we become free to be compassionate.”
True servants don’t need to cover their walls with plaques or trophies or lofty titles. If anybody had a chance to “name-drop” it was James the half-brother of Jesus. Consider those credentials: growing up with Jesus as your brother! Yet he simply referred to himself as “a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ” (James 1:1).
Let’s not worry about what others think of us. Let’s just, “Serve the Lord with gladness” (Psalm 100:2).
Tags: First Impressions, insecure, service
Every week churches and organizations have to improvise at the last minute because volunteers didn’t prepare, show up, or even call to say they weren’t coming. Its not fair to the people they are ministering to, and its not fair to those who must step in at the last minute unprepared. I remember a young couple who stopped attending our church years ago because they seemed to get recruited for some fill-in ministry every weekend.
Its God’s design that in the church everyone finds an area of ministry and stays faithful. That makes a strong church. But, it seems the larger the church, the more people sit back and expect someone else to do everything for them.
Jesus taught the parable of the talents to emphasize this truth. He said, referring to the servant who failed to use his one talent: “Take the talent from him and give it to the one who has the ten talents” (Matthew 25:28 NIV). Fail to use what you’ve been given and you’ll lose it. Use what you’ve got and God will increase it. Down here on earth we’re practicing. Like athletes, we’re training for our big day. Paul said, “They do it for a gold medal that tarnishes…You’re after one that’s gold eternally” (1 Corinthians 9:25). So, practice well.
Tags: faithfulness, preparation, service
President Harry Truman once said, “When you get to be President, there are the honors, the 21-gun salutes, all those things. You have to remember it isn’t for you. It’s for the Presidency.”
There’s an old folk tale of the man who took his ox for a day in the fields. All day long a flea sat on the ox’s nose. At day’s end, as the farmer led the ox through town on the way home, the flea grandly proclaimed to the townspeople: “We’ve been plowing!”
The servant of Christ recognizes that it is God who produces the result. We are given the privilege of taking a ride with the Master.
Tags: pride, service, Truman
In his book, Its Not My Department, motivational speaker Peter Glen illustrates the value of learning to serve. He tells the story of a man named John Barrier, who went in to cash a $25 check at the U. S. Bank of Washington in Spokane. In his Ace Concrete Company baseball cap and dungarees, Barrier looked like an ordinary customer.
As he left the bank, he tried to drive his pickup truck out of the parking lot. The young man at the parking booth, however, told Barrier to cough up 60 cents, or he’d have to go back into the bank and get his parking ticket validated – proving he had done business at the bank.
Annoyed, Barrier backed up, parked his truck and went back into the bank to have the teller stamp his ticket. He couldn’t find the original teller, and the one he did find refused to validate it. She thought he was a dead beat.
This time, Barrier was really ticked off. “Give me the $ 1 million I keep here!” he snorted. “I’m taking it next door.”
Alarmed, the teller called a supervisor, who whispered to her that her customer was a multimillionaire real-estate developer. The bank apologized and quickly stamped his parking ticket – but it was too late. Barrier withdrew his money and took it to the new bank down the street. Because of its unserving nature, the bank was out $1,000,000.60.
What does that story say to you?
Tags: money, service
A woman named Nancy put this ad in her local newspaper: “If you are lonely or have a problem, call me. I am in a wheelchair and seldom get out. We can share our problems with each other. Just call. I’d love to talk.” The response to that ad has been tremendous – 30 calls or more every week.
What motivated this woman to reach out from her wheelchair to help others in need? Nancy explained that before her paralysis she had been perfectly healthy but in deep despair. She tried to commit suicide by jumping from her apartment window, but instead she became paralyzed from the waist down.
In the hospital, utterly frustrated, she sensed Jesus saying to her, “Nancy, you’ve had a healthy body but a crippled soul. From now on you will have a crippled body but a healthy soul.” As a result of that experience, she surrendered her life to Christ. When she was finally allowed to go home, she prayed for a way to share God’s grace with others, and the idea of the newspaper ad occurred to her.
Is there a way God could be using bad stuff in your life to lead you down the path He has set for you? Ask Him.
Tags: call, crippled, newspaper, service