Tuesday, August 9, 2011

How do you serve God?

I had a very interesting and wonderful conversation today.  In it we talked about how fewer and fewer of our young people are feeling a call to full time Christian ministry and why that may be.  In talking about this I thought back to my childhood and teenage years.  I grew up in the church and recently made public my call to Christian ministry.  But thinking about my childhood and time in my church youth group I realized that the subject of Christian ministry wasn't talked about much.  As I became and junior and senior in high school the questions that I was asked were basically, "What are you going to be? Where are you going to college? What do you want to be after college?"  There were few questions about how what I was going to be or what I was going to do would truly serve God.  Not saying those questions were wrong but they got me thinking, should we be asking different questions of our young people?  When children get to high school they are guided by counselors to choose a path for their life based on test scores and grades.  We are asking 17 and 18 year olds to make decisions on what they are going to do with the rest of their lives when they haven't yet grown enough to know what to expect from life.  I think that maybe instead of asking "What are you going to do?" or "What are you going to be?" we should be asking "How will you serve God?"  Maybe when we talk to young people and they say, "Well, I want to go to college and become an accountant" we should ask "Is that what you feel God leading you to?" or "In what ways can you serve God in that career?" I'm not saying that everyone should go in to full time Christian ministry because we still need doctors, lawyers, accountants, car mechanics, pilots and every other vocation and career in the world but what we need to ask ourselves daily is "How do I serve God?"

No comments:

Post a Comment