My Week in the "D" - Service

What is the true meaning of service? What does it mean to have a servant's heart? How do we get there?

All of these questions were ones that plagued my heart before my week in the "D", but now I believe I have answers. I'm not saying I'm perfect at anything involving service, or having the greatest servants heart - in any way, but I am saying that I think I know how to get there faster and in a greater way.

1) What is the true meaning of service?

If you truly want to understand the meaning of service, go to a place where service is taboo and begin your work. I'm not saying drop everything and be a bum in Detroit that does nothing but volunteer (although it is a blast!) but do something. Helping others is something that has always given me the warm and fuzzies, but knowing I am doing something for someone who isn't anywhere near used to it - gosh is that amazing.

2) What does it mean to have a servant's heart?

This is something I've always seen as a good thing to have and I thought I'd mastered it, but man was I wrong. I got to Detroit and immediately living with 14 other people that I didn't know SUPER well to begin with was overwhelming. In my mind I was there to serve Detroit, and I learned it wasn't just serving Detroit - it was serving those around me. Towards the end of the week we were all that much closer - and that much more loving and the inside jokes blew up!

3) How do we as a whole get there?

Open up. Let God in. Be happy about doing work that serves Jesus. In the word it is stated that if we do something for the least of these, we do it to and for Jesus. Why don't you want to give everything you have to serve the God you love? It's not easy, and it's definitely a process that I'm still working on - but it feels so good to be this much closer to succeeding!

Service is loving those who don't often feel such an emotion presented to them by other people. I love loving. 

until next time (:

A Week in the "D" - Agape

This won't be my only post about my mission trip in Detroit, because it will take much more than a day and a half to digest the beauty that happened there. This one is about Agape.

If you know what the word means, you don't have to keep reading if you don't want to, but it takes a different turn then you think. If you don't know what it means, keep reading.

Agape means Sacrificial Love. It means the love that Christ felt for us as He hung on that tree. It means the love He felt as He sacrificed His reputation, cleanliness by Jewish law, His status, His everything to become the least of these for our souls. It means the kind of love we are to have for the least os these. 

To be first one must be last. I continued to tell myself I wanted to be last, but did I? Did I really believe myself when I said that? Until this week I thought so, but being told that there is a HUGE difference in the complacent Christian Philao (give and take only) type of love and agape love...I knew I was wrong. After a full week (and when I say full, I mean full) of serving, loving, and growing with and without 14 other human beings. We encountered broken and lonely, broken and rebuilding, healed and helping, and those who were unreadable. I am amazed by the love God pushed into my face through all the incredible people we met.

One night we were all dead tired, but I kept volunteering songs for us all to sing. I just wanted us to praise and worship, and feel God in the home we stayed in. There was a man who had come in off the streets (he was a regular to the family we stayed with, and such a sweet and gentle human being) and as he listened to our praise and worship for almost 45 minutes, on top of the talking and growing on an already renewed faith in God with our host father - he made the decision after our singing to get baptized on Easter Sunday. 

If we hadn't sacrificed our tired, sleep deprived selves to sing to God and give Him the glory, that man would not have made that decision that night. I amazed by Agape.

It will take some growing pains, some work, and a lot of God's grace to work on sacrificing myself more and more - but God made my heart this big for a reason. He'll break it a thousand times for what breaks His if He has to. 

Agape.

until next time (: