What am I supposed to do at church? I know God wants me to do something, but everything I have tried has just not worked. I have come across so many people who ask this question. Many of them really love the Lord, but like me, don’t know what God wants them to do in church. In my own struggle to answer this question, I came across the following verse:
“For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Eph 2:10
From this, it is clear that to me:
- There are tasks that are already prepared for me to do.
- God has prepared me for these tasks.
- God knows everything and took into consideration the pace of life in my time on earth and the responsibilities of life that I have.
- God does not leave us in the dark to discover the tasks, risking that they will not get done, He wants us to do them.
But very often we are not sure about where God wants us to complete these tasks. We run from church activity to church activity, trying them out like a guessing game. “Is this it, Lord?” Then, when we have exhausted that, we move from one activity to the next in the secular world, using our human wisdom to find out what God wants us to do with our lives. The end result is often burnout.
The answer is getting involved, that we know, but where to start?
God wants us to be involved with Him and then get involved with people. He says to us in Matt 22:37-39: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind and love your neighbor as yourself.” Every one of us that calls ourselves a “child of God” is involved firstly, in a relationship with God and from this relationship flows our relationships with others.
The best hint that I ever received was: Go where God is working.
Where is God working: in the hearts of believers, they are God’s hands and feet to the world. But God will not send us out without equipping us and so for each believer there is the necessity to mature as a believer within the body of Christ. We are quick to run off and work for God, but slow to do the work of maturing as a believer.
I freshly understood this from Eph 4:12-13, where certain members of the Body, have as their task:
“To prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the Body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity of faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature attaining the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”
All believers are to mature within the Body of Christ, being prepared, built up, taught and reaching a measure of the “fullness of Christ”. When you are mature: you know God, you know your gifting and you are using your gifts by looking for opportunities to serve in order to strengthen and encourage the Body of Christ, the church.
So many of us, run out, get involved in some project, and forget to mature within the Body of Christ. Maturing within the Body of Christ, involves loving and being loved.
“From Him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.” Eph 4:16
It implies that as we get involved with God, we get involved with people, especially the people at church. Getting involved with people may prove inconvenient, we may need to hang around people we would normally avoid, maybe take out some money, give up our leisure time, get involved in something that is messy! We may do damage to our reputation or get labeled within our own circle of friends. People close to us, may object to our involvement with others, feeling their needs should have priority.
But each of us needs to “work out our salvation” (Phil 2:12) in the context of the Body of Christ, working towards reaching maturity and the “whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” Within the context of our service in the Body of Christ, He will reveal the individual tasks He has for us. These will always fall within the context of what the Body of Christ is doing, because that is where God works.
Go where God is working.
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