Two Reasons We Must Want To Serve God

 
Is serving God an option or obligation? Do we need the dramatic, mystical, and extraordinary meeting with God to assure us of our calling to serve God?

We focus on Isaiah 6:1-8 as our model of God’s commissioning His chosen messenger.

Probably, we grew up hearing when we were kids in Sunday school and reading when we were grown and matured, similar Bible stories and settled with the idea that those who serve God have to experience what prophets, like Isaiah, had experienced.

You have probably heard some Christians giving the familiar excuse not to serve God because “I didn’t hear God’s call”.

Can we not see Isaiah’s commissioning from the perspective of Isaiah, who was at the temple, praying, worshipping, and most of all, expressing his want to serve God?

And that the vision that came to him was an affirmation of his expression of wanting to be God’s messenger.

I am convinced that our desire to serve God is not based solely on a dramatic, mystical, and supernatural meeting similar to Isaiah’s vision.

We quickly opt out of serving God without such a “special” event.

I have noted that many Christians would choose to do selective service and easily reserve those “bigger” tasks for people with a special calling.

What would make us want to serve God today?

Let me cite two things why we must want to serve God.

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, as far as Isaiah is concerned, he was able to make his wish to serve God.

His aspiration to serve God led to his commissioning, and he successfully discharged his mission as the one God had sent to prophesy to His people.

The crucial question and challenge for us today is, “What would make us want to serve God today?”

The Urgent Need to Serve

Perhaps you would agree that we are in a worse situation than during the time of Isaiah. Do you know why?

In Isaiah’s time, there was no Internet or digital media that remnants of “sons and daughters of Sodom and Gomorrah” use today to promote immorality and greed.

At least, in Isaiah’s time, the worldview is just within the areas of Judah and Jerusalem and neighbouring countries. There were no weapons of mass destruction to lives and properties.

Sadly, the progress of modern technology and scientific knowledge, which allowed man to live comfortably and prosper, has made him turn away from God.

In the time of Isaiah, at least the enemies of Israel acknowledge that the God of Israel is strong and mighty. Today, God-believers’ enemies proclaim the non-existence of the Great Almighty God.

If our present generation is worse than Isaiah’s time, then as people of God, are we not supposed to commit to serving God with more intensity today?

The church is given to commit to the keeping of faith. The invitation and calling of God have been given through the Lord Jesus Christ, his life, death, resurrection, and coming again.

This is the Good News that we must PRESERVE and SERVE to our fellowmen.

Partakers of the Body of Christ

What would make us want to serve God is the living fact that we are partakers of the body of Christ.

You are wrong if you say you won’t serve God because you are not called, and there’s no special event to attest.

Remember that we partake of the Lord’s Supper every month or as often as possible.

God, revealed in Jesus Christ, whose life we celebrate in the Lord’s Supper, is our dramatic, mystical, and supernatural encounter with God.

The invitation has always been given and offered to us in the bread and the cup.

When we receive the bread and the cup, we summon ourselves to take part in the life of the body of Christ, which is the living church.

When we partake of the bread and cup of the Lord Jesus Christ, the voice of God has always been there asking, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”

When we partake of the bread and cup of the Lord Jesus Christ, we commit our lives to respond, “Here am I. Send me!” until the Lord Jesus Christ comes.

May these two things, the urgent need to serve and our partaking in the body of Christ, make us thirst to serve God while we are able and available.

AUTHOR’S NOTE:

This blog post has excerpts from my sermon at Glenfield Baptist Church. I thank and appreciate Pastor Colin Hopkins, Pastor Andrew Monk and Glenfield Baptist Church for allowing me to share God’s message on 10 June 2012.