My call to serve

How do you know when you’re being called to serve? How do you know what you’ve been called to serve too? How do you get passed your own doubt in your abilities to serve?

Over the course of the last few weeks these questions have been racing through my mind. I don’t pretend to know the answers to this questions I just now my own experience with this. These questions are not easily answerable. It is also hard to distinguish what is from God and what is from your own mind. My church had a sermon on this this morning which is where the idea came to me. I felt like God was speaking directly to my own doubts through the preaching.

Our minister covered a lot of points but the main focus was that we are or will be called to serve God in a way that will be revealed to us when it is needed. The sermon was on Exodus 4: 1-17 where Moses is conversing with God about his lack of confidence speaking and how he felt he couldn’t serve God best in this way. This of course made God angry, so he told Moses to use Aaron – a useless piece of the puzzle but necessary for Moses to do his job. So Aaron spoke for Moses while Moses showed the signs to the people God had given him. It was not important for Moses to speak to the people which is why Aaron was quite useless in this. The important thing was for Moses to show the 3 signs the Lord had given him. God choose Moses because of his weakness. Moses only thought of how it would affect him, how it would portray himself to the people. He only thought of himself but God used him despite this to teach his people.

This example to relevant even into today’s society. God has chosen you to serve in a compacity that will most-likely involve an aspect you view as a weakness. He choose you because of this weakness not to embarrass you or to bring glory to us but to bring glory to Him. Because of this glory can be seen through the weakness of the serving making you humble in God’s holy presence. We are all instruments in God’s hands. Some are more broken or bent than others but still all useful to bring him glory. We are acting on the strength of the Lord inspite of our weaknesses. 

If you look in the Bible you will see how God uses weaknesses. He used Jacob even though he had a limp, David even though he harmed his own people, Moses even though he lacked the confidence to speak. He too can use you in ways you might consider yourself lacking. We must rely on his grace so that we can see his glory. It is never about us, it is always about the glory of his name and the power he gives us through that.

In my own life I feared I lacked the necessary skills to accomplish all I need to before this trip. I realized I was only relying on myself and not seeking God in this aspect. I think it’s a natural response to take everything and put the burden on our shoulders but in doing that we further ourselves from God when we need him the most. I realized I had to put my own pride aside and ask for help. It was a humbling experience, one that I’m ashamed to admit is harder than it should be. I wish my natural response when I face a stressful situation was to turn to God, but it wasn’t. I think because this is such a glaring weakness to myself it is also one of the reason I feel like this is my call to serve. This is what I’m supposed to do. I’m supposed to push myself out of my comfort zone and truly work on letting God into all aspects of my life while also seeing where or to whom he is guiding me to. It is going to be a challenge to break old habits and replace them with new ones. As you are reading this I hope you too are open to see where God is calling you to serve.

-G