Stewarding Our Gifts of Service With Endurance
My husband and daughter recently returned from a trip to Guatemala with our church for a week long mission trip. To hear them recount stories, full of inspiring God-honoring conversations and scenery alike, produced in me a longing to serve on mission as well. My heart was stirred to shed the comforts around me and take off into some foreign country to serve the underprivileged and poor as the hands and feet of Christ.
Though never an easy endeavor, its rewards abound.
To be honest, when they asked me about my week, I struggled to comprise entirely positive words in response. Yes, we chased fun. Yes, we discovered adventure. Yes, we feasted with friends. Yet, all that I could summon was exhaustion from the effects of solo-parenting: juggling emotions, disappointments, demands, and sleepovers by myself. You know how it goes. Juggling the needs at home is an endless task.
At times, in fact, it most assuredly sounds better to visit another continent altogether to serve short-term, rather than continue in daily acts of service. Doesn’t it? Yet God continually calls us to steward our service first within the walls of our homes. No one way is better or worse, easier or harder, however, there is an element of endurance that is required to serve those around us day to day.
Over the summer, I joined (in)courage and my friend, Dorina Lazo Gilmore-Young, along their study, Create In Me A Heart Of Mercy. Multiple times my heart was moved by God’s heart for mercy and His call for us to extend mercy toward others. Dorina mentions that mercy encompasses:
compassion
reaching out to meet a need without merit being earned
the divine strength or ability to feel empathy for those in need
While there are many our minds picture when we read each definition, mercy calls us to love and serve our children, our spouse, our friends, our neighbors, our critics, and our co-workers, even if they are difficult to love. Mercy is love and service without merit.
In my own time with the Lord, and in an effort to cease my natural bent towards striving, my prayer was not simply for a heart of mercy, but that God would instill in me His heart for mercy. There is a key difference there. He is doing the transformation.
If we seek mercy as the end goal, we will miss the One who sustains us through this road of serving endurance. If we seek God, He will transform our hearts into hearts that love and serve as an extension of His mercy. As we become imitators of Him, we cannot help but be transformed into more of His likeness.
Perhaps you are gearing up for the school year ahead. Perhaps you are returning from your own mission trip unsure how to reconcile the needs and wants in your own life. Perhaps you are simply exhausted from a summer of constant activity with children in tow. Perhaps you are ready to engage on mission this fall in a way you haven’t before.
Be encouraged that as you seek God’s heart of love for you, He will fill you with more than enough to continue pouring out to those around you. You can endure because our stewardship of service is simply extending what we have been given.
His steadfast love endures forever. Psalm 136
Press on confident that the needs around you will never outlast the love of your Father. The rewards of your unseen service do not remain unnoticed by Him.
So, shed the comforts around you. Let go of the need to be seen. And as Dorina reminds us, look for ways to multiply God’s mercy in the every day and in the extraordinary to those around you.
“Therefore the LORD waits to be gracious to you, and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you. For the LORD is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him.” Isaiah 30:18 ESV