Devotion 6: The Gift of Service
Giving is a multifaceted area of the church that often gets labeled as purely financial. The early church deeply understood what it meant to provide for each other’s needs financially and through service to one another. Living in a society motivated by money rather than services, we often forget the call to provide for the needs of the church according to our skills and time.
Look at Ephesians 6:7-8, “Rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man, knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a bondservant or is free.”
The Greek for service here (douleuó) means to be subjected or devoted to. Our mindset should be on what or who we should be devoted to.
As believers, who or what are some things we should be devoted to?
I hope that one of your answers will be “to Christ” or “to God.” This is a very true statement, but one of the ways that we demonstrate that we are devoted to Christ is through devotion to His Bride, the Church. We are called to provide service to one another, our brothers and sisters in Christ. This is not meant to be done out of guilt, sparingly, or with grumbling but out of heart desiring to offer that same service to the Lord Himself. Often, we treat Sunday morning gatherings like a concert that we simply pay for through our tithes. The Church is each one of us as believers, and we give financially to the institution, but we should also give in the ways in which we serve each other.
What are some skills that you have that you could offer to the Church?
Unfortunately, some people tend to use this as a substitute to avoid giving financially. We are called to submit both unto the Lord, our finances, and the skills with which He has blessed us. I would challenge you to reflect on your heart in regard to the giving of your finances and time to the Church. Do you give and serve as you would to the Lord, or do you do it with a heart of reluctance and grumbling?
James 2:15-16 reminds us, “If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?”