Serve the Lord by serving others!
Matthew 10:42– “Whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water to drink because he is my disciple—Amen I tell you—he will never lose his reward.” (EHV)
Do you ever get jealous of people when they tout their achievement in front of you? Do you ever sigh when looking at people’s posts on Facebook and think your life is nothing compared to them? We tend to measure our successes by what we accomplish. It seems that no matter what we do, there is someone who has more accomplishments than we do.
This competitive accomplishment focus can even creep into spiritual matters. We think the more we do at church, the better believer we are. If we are part of the 20% that do everything at church, we must be closer to God than the 80% that do nothing at church. It can exhaust us or make us prideful. But Jesus does not measure success by what we do or our accomplishments. The measure he uses is our connection to him as disciples. When we do things only because of what Christ has already done for us, it is a success, even if it is giving a glass of water to a child. A disciple of Christ already has eternal life. We do not need to earn anything because Christ already earned it all for us. His grace has given us the kingdom. With this before our hearts, we are created in Christ to do good things even if it does not seem like it is an important task.
But it is interesting that though the world could care less that we are giving a glass of water to a child, Jesus takes notice. Jesus then attaches and interesting blessing to our mundane work…a reward. But we must be clear that the reward is not heaven, because heaven is a gift. But in a special way, Jesus will reward us for the good things we do to the least of his disciples. Jesus informs us of these special blessings that he will reveal in heaven to encourage us to keep on doing what God has prepared in advance for us to do with joy and determination. And in this way, we are truly serving Jesus!
Dear Lord, help us not get caught up in the earthly accomplishments that will lead us away from you. Help us remember to remain humble and acknowledge you as the reason why we have eternal life in heaven. With this on our hearts, let us pour ourselves into loving and serving people in our lives as if we are serving only you! In your name we pray. Amen!