What Are You Doing?
My 6-year-old recently asked me what my favorite Bible verse is. As hundreds of possible responses flooded into my mind, I knew her question was looking for the short answer. So off to Philippians I went, and I thought I’d stop at Philippians 1:21: “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” As I explained what it meant to live (and die) with our sights on Jesus, I was praying for the right things for her young mind to grasp. Yet the more I shared, the more I had to ask myself “Is my life truly Jesus, and is my death something that I would consider gain?”
In my personal devotional reading, I was in Ephesians 4, and I was at “to equip his people for works of service” (vs. 12). I had to think, “Am I doing that?” My Lord has given to many the task of equipping and to all the task of serving. This demands a response of each one of us.
These thoughts came as I prepared my Monday evening Bible study for the college students. We are in Acts for the whole year, and I got to speak on the great passage that starts off Acts 6. Here, the church needed to organize some aspects of service among church members, while allowing the Twelve to focus on serving through the word and prayer. My studies also brought me to Mark 10:45, that used the same word for service in applying it to Jesus: “the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve.” I had the same thought (part 3): what am I doing to serve Christ and to live for him? If I am imitating Christ, I am serving!
So, in case I would forget… at that same time I was preparing for a message for Sunday, in Colossians 3, which starts: “Set your hearts on things above” and “your life is now hidden with Christ in God.” I couldn’t avoid the thought that my heart and life could well be focused too much on the priorities and attractions of this world, rather than on serving Christ for his glory (verse 17).
In summary, whatever you do, as you serve (even equipping others to do so), do it all for his glory, to the maximum in life, until death comes when God has ordained it. All for his glory!
There you have it: my favorite verse… or maybe some… of many.