Serving Others – So Much Better Than It Sounds!

So I’m saying my prayers on the way to work this morning, as I usually do. My mission trip has been pushed up a couple of months and I’m stressing a little. I began praying for God to help me cover the cost, confessing and repenting for my fears – which translate to a lack of faith. And with the mission trip on my mind, I asked God to use me to be His hands and feet. Let me show someone your love today. Let me be a blessing so that you can get the glory. And then it happened…

I look over and there’s this young girl, dressed in work clothes – black pants and a nice blue shirt, walking down the highway. Its between 6 and 7 a.m. and already the temperatures are in the mid- to upper-eighties and climbing. The humidity is so high that the air is gummy. We’re also just a few minutes outside of a pretty rough neighborhood. And just a few yards behind this girl is a white van with the flashers on.

I immediately started to laugh because it was soooo obvious that God was answering my prayers and in the most immediate fashion I’ve ever experienced! I wanted to be your hands and feet and I asked you to give me someone to bless today…so, I whipped a U-ie and pulled up beside her to ask if I could give her a ride somewhere. She accepted. In our conversation, I found out she is a young mother of three autistic boys, all under 8 years old, and she’s working two jobs to make ends meet. She had gone all the way to her first job only to be told they didn’t need her that day. On her way back home, her tire blew out. Her “spare” was completely without tread and had wires poking out of it.

All I could think was, “Thank you, God, for helping me to see her! Thank you, God, for making me stop. Thank you that I have the kind of job that it was okay for me to be an hour late to work so I could help this young, precious woman and show her the love and kindness of my Father.”

I wish I could say there was some big witnessing moment or I helped her get saved or I pulled over to the nearby lake and baptized her…but there wasn’t anything like that. We just talked and I helped her get all taken care of, she thanked me, and that was it. It was just a moment of Godly care and compassion for another human being. It was just a moment that I got to do God’s work, right here in my own “back yard,” and I got to show her some love with nothing in it for me but a feeling of happiness and contentment.

But oh how God likes to use little things like this to reveal things about Himself!

First of all, he showed me He was listening. He showed me He hears my prayers and He CAN answer them immediately…but sometimes, its better for me if He makes me wait a little. It teaches me patience and trust and it increases my level of faith. So I know He heard my cries for help with my mission trip and I am once again laying the financing at His feet.

Secondly, God reminded me of how He likes to bless us – incognito. Like I said, it was no big witnessing moment that ended with her ultimate salvation. I planted a seed of God’s love that I’ll likely never see bloom. But that’s how He does things with us before we come to Him. He’ll bless us when we don’t deserve it. He’ll protect us when we don’t ask. He’ll make plans for us and guide our path even before we “know” Him and long before we’ll ask Him to. And after we become Christians, He doesn’t stop; He just keeps on blessing us in quiet, clever ways. Its all these little “undercover” things He does for us that make me smile. We don’t see them for years and years, and then, if we’re lucky, we can look back later on and say, “Oh! That was You!”

And, finally, God showed me how you’re not really complete unless you’re operating in the gifts that He has placed in you. He has given me a gift of compassion. I love people I don’t even know. I love people even after they hurt me. I want to help people and I want to bless them and I want to encourage them and I want to see them discover who they are in Christ and watch them grow and develop as Christians. But I don’t feel content when I fail to use those gifts that He has given me. I could have driven by that girl this morning, like so many did, and gone on to work, but because I stopped, I got blessed. It felt so good to help this young girl I didn’t even know. It made my whole day brighter!

I know, when I get to Ethiopia, eventhough the needs will be far greater and eventhough the heartbreak and pain that I will witness and have to deal with will be more than I can possibly imagine in my sheltered little American life, I KNOW that I’m going to be blessed. I’m going to feel God working through me. I’m going to feel fufilled and vibrant and complete because I will be helping people who need so desperately to feel God’s love. I’m looking forward to God using me, again, to be His hands and feet, to be His mouthpiece who offers words of compassion and encouragement, to be His ears that listen closely and with great understanding, to see people through His eyes, and to love on people with his arms.

My life is so good. Thank you, God, for all you’ve done for me and for all you continue to do. 🙂