A Mandate from God is Serving Others

As Christians, we are called on by God to the role of serving others — and not only in the area of finances. We are to serve others with every opportunity we can find, and to always be looking for opportunities to do so. And next to witnessing to the testimony of the Gospel, it is a primary function as children of God as well as loving God with all of our hearts and souls and minds.

When we think of serving others, we often think of getting involved in charities or giving money to homeless people on the side of the street. However, serving is so much more than that. It is not something we do once in a while. It is a way of life.

Always have the thought of service to others in your heart, every waking moment of every day. There are all kinds of unexpected ways to go about this. You may not even realize you are doing it at times. For example, getting up before your children and making them breakfast and fixing their lunchboxes for school is serving. Making dinner for your family or buying groceries for your housebound grandmother is serving.

We are serving when we allow someone to get in front of us in traffic or let someone with fewer items get in front of us in line at the grocery store. Even picking up something that an old person dropped and handing it to them or retrieving a ball from a roof for a child are all ways of serving others as God intended, if done with the right motives.

However, be careful. If we serve because it makes us feel better, than no reward will be set aside for us. It is for a selfish reason … that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. Matthew 6:2.

Do it out of a heartfelt desire for, and love of, God. We are to serve for his pleasure, not ours.

The whole point of serving others is to think of the needs of others before we think of our own. As parents, we are used to doing that with our children, but we often forget to do it in other parts of our daily lives. We may become short-tempered with strangers, act selfishly in public, and decide that we deserve something more than someone else and grab that sweater out from under the reaching hands of someone else at a department store sale.

When tempted to be selfish, just remember how much God gave to us. It should be all we need to soften our hearts and serve as we were meant to as we serve God by serving others.

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