All I Am To Do

This morning I was afforded the opportunity to stand beside my friends Josh, Andrew, Krystal, Alyssa, and James as our church recognized their graduations from high school. In addition, my friends Tyler and Nate were recognized for graduating college. Over the years I’ve spent a lot of time with each of these people and it meant a lot to be able to watch them be recognized in this way. Being up there with my friends informed me to two things:

1)      It made me feel very old

2)      It made me understand what it means to serve the Lord

This should have been obvious to me but I could see it today with clarity. You see I’ve spent many years working with students and have considered it a service to the Lord and perhaps it was, but what I saw today showed me that serving the Lord really is as simple as three elements.

1)      Be willing – this is where we begin, where we live, and where we die. Willingness really means submitting to the will of the Lord as we understand it. More often than not, this submission comes tentatively and begrudgingly like leading a contentious mule. We approach service with only the barest notion of what it entails or what is required. At its core, willingness requires humility that the Lord, omniscient and omnipotent, knows the path. In faith we step into service, whatever it may be, in ignorance.

2)      Observe what the Lord does – our meager act of submission is the seed which the Lord, through His Holy Spirit chooses to use (despite our ignobility and doubts) to fulfill His plans. We submit. He works. Abraham believed and the Lord gave him a son. Moses yielded to the Lord and the Lord brought His people out of Israel. Jonah relented in his disobedience and the Lord saved Nineveh. Our contributions (as we see them) of knowledge, skill, or even passion are of little account in the Lord’s work. In my years of service to the Lord (such as it is) I have come to the conclusion that I am less of an active combatant and more of an observer. I have been given the opportunity to see the Lord move in the lives of my friends who stood with me today and many others.

3)      Praise Him for what He has done – we are not only observers to the Lord’s work, we are also His correspondents. “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the ends of the earth,” Jesus declared. Since our only contribution to the Lord’s work is our willing submission, we have no claim to its success or failure. Our role then is to praise the Lord for what He has done.

My life is nothing more than these. There is nothing about me or anything that I’ve done to justify standing beside my friends and celebrating the Lord’s work in their lives. They are testaments to the Lord’s love and power. All I am on this earth to do is submit myself to the Lord, to watch Him do amazing things, and my obligation becomes to thank Him for the wondrous things He does.

Thank you indeed.