The Freedom of Service

Nevertheless, I have written to remind you more boldly on some points because of the grace given me by God  to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles, serving as a priest of the gospel of God. God’s purpose is that the Gentiles may be an acceptable offering, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.

Romans 15:15–16

I wonder what you live for. Perhaps it’s pretty simple, you live to live. But I think if we think about our motives and the things we say, it might be clear that we have at least some deeper reasons for why we live. I’ve been reading this book that thinks about this a little bit, and then I came across Paul’s note here in Romans.  As a kid you might have learned to leave a room cleaner than when you got there. And so we live our lives thinking we can leave the world in a better place than we inherited it. Other times, we are living for distraction. One of the things we share in common is that we are likely to have hardships at every turn of life. It’s actually not just easy to live. So we distract ourselves intentionally and unintentionally. We live to fulfill our desires. 

Because we were not made for any of these reasons, I think we will all find them to be lacking. And I think we also will find them impossible to accomplish. Does getting your heart’s desire complete all your desires? No. I still need just this one more thing to make it complete. We’re never quite there. Does making the world a better place work? No, because somehow it still keeps falling apart. There is some kind of atrophy that is embedded into the world that we can’t overcome. You build something and it starts to fall apart on day 1. What was once a vibrant place is now a ghost town. 

How should we direct our lives? The book I’m reading and Paul remind us that we should live as ministers of Christ Jesus, as priests of the gospel of God. We are servants to God. This is an interesting idea isn’t it? Why is this the better way? It is because it is how we reject the idolatry of the self. We imagine in so many ways we are centers of our universe. That often hurts us really bad. Sometimes we seem to thrive living for ourselves.  At the end of the day, living for ourselves destroys because it’s not reality. We are not God. And so when we turn our gaze off of ourselves, and towards the service of the one who made us we are entrusting the outcomes of our lives to the one who is able to care for us more than we could for ourselves. We are entrusting ourselves to the one who is working all things for our good and for the good of his people who want to know God’s salvation. God will make all things new. It takes the burden off of us, and gives us freedom to live. And in that freedom our work isn’t empty. It is done in service to our Lord who cares for you and calls you. May we find satisfaction in our simple service to him.