Maybe this is more of a (personal) reminder than a resolution, but who would I be if I started my first post of the year without using the word resolution??
This comes straight out of my notes from a book study I was going through last summer:
July 29, 2011
Notes on Service
The two 'heart-beats' of serving:
1. Learn to really see the needs of people encountered daily and/or respond to the Holy Spirits nudgings.
*Be sensitive to the Spirit's work in our lives.
2. Developing a willingness to take the initiative and ACT.
- overcoming feelings of shyness, inadequacy and laziness.
- actually setting aside time.
- definitely means learning to reach past natural inclinations and serve whether or not we feel like it.
Explanation:
Yes- it is natural to be selfish or self absorbed. Everybody is naturally like that. It is supernatural to see the needs and desires of others and seek their best through your actions.
* Effective and loving service is less a matter of qualifications and more a matter of willingness.
Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. This is my command: Love each other. (John 15:13-17 NIV)
