Serving for...

Today I want to share a guest blog from Emily Cooper the director of our Youth Ministries. She is the wife of our Associate Pastor Mitchell and a passionate follower of Jesus Christ. The Coopers are a wonderful blessing and extremely gifted. I'm extremely thankful to have them on our team! Here's her post.


As I was reading this morning, this verse stuck out to me, and even as I continued reading, I was drawn back to it again and again in my mind. And I've struggled this very morning with this very thing...

"Watch over the flock of God entrusted to you. Watch over it willingly, not grudgingly - not for what you will get out of it, but because you are eager to serve God." I Peter 5:2

It's a great reminder, an excruciatingly hard truth for me that we are serving for CHRIST, for His glory, and often times people don't know, don't care, don't see or respond to our love in the ways we hope/expect that they will. But the ultimate truth is, we do things to serve God, for His smile, His pleasure. All other service is meaningless, like a clanging gong...

This morning I grudgingly did something for someone - there was really no pleasure in it, I think they could tell, I knew, and then the guilt inevitably followed. I figured there would be no "thank you" or recognition of the effort it took on my part. It is my prayer that God would renew our hearts, captivate us with His love, and we would serve the body of Christ (the church), and all others God has placed around us, with our eyes fixed on Christ and out of an overflow of His love, a response of our love for Him...

"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men." Colossians 3:23

Emily Cooper