Hi, there! So, I recently began attending an Episcopal Church. They have opportunities to volunteer in various ways, such as helping at a soup kitchen, growing and taking care of vegetables in a Church garden for a food pantry, and financially supporting a local Christian homeless shelter. I've been itching to volunteer for a long time, since I really want to do good works and serve God, and I really want to help in the soup kitchen in particular (I can't afford to help with money, but thankfully I can help with time and labor), but it would only be about a month of me attending before asking if I could help in the soup kitchen. That makes it seem like it's way too early to volunteer, like a month is too soon. Is that too soon? I might be overreacting, especially because I'm sure they'd like more volunteers, but I'm just not sure.
Thank you and God bless!
Desiring to serve is a great thing - so long as the desire arises out of a desire, a love, for God. The Bible tells us that anything we say, or know, or do that doesn't arise fundamentally out of love, first of all for God and then for others, is ultimately useless.
1 Corinthians 13:1-3
1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
No amount of soup serving, or cleaning the floors at the local homeless shelter, or whatever, serves any eternal, God-honoring, spiritual purpose if it doesn't arise from a love for God and from His love. The motives people have for service can be quite mixed: religious piety, obligation, self-righteousness, moralism, conformity, fear, even, can all be motives that prompt "good works" of community service. But none of these God accepts as the proper motive for service, as the apostle Paul indicated in the quotation above.
We don't, as human beings, have the sort of pure, holy, selfless love God possesses. Human love is ugly, contingent, typically deeply self-centered, sentimental and weak. There is nothing in our sort of natural, human love God finds particularly attractive or useful. And so, He gives to us Himself, the God who is Love, in the Person of the Holy Spirit, and in so doing imparts to us the divine love He is (
Romans 5:5; Galatians 5:22). It is this love that God intends should fuel our acts of service. And when it is fueling our good deeds, it is easy to tell because it manifests in the way Paul the apostle described:
1 Corinthians 13:4-8
4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant
5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;
6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.
7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never ends...
I listened to a sermon several months ago now in which a story was told about a Scottish army sergeant in a Japanese POW camp giving his life for a fellow soldier. The sergeant was the biggest and strongest of the prisoners, built like an ox, and of all the prisoners the one most likely to survive the terrible abuse and starvation all of the prisoners daily endured. But he saw his cell mate ailing, slowly dwindling away toward death, and began to give him his own meager portion of food, and his blanket, doing all he could to sustain his brother-in-arms. One day, the news rippled through the camp that the sergeant had died. Everyone was shocked. He hadn't fallen ill; he'd simply starved to death in the process of caring for his friend. The sacrifice of this man galvanized the entire camp of prisoners into self-sacrificing action for one another, bringing them together in a way that enabled them to help each other survive.
A lovely story this is, to be sure. The sacrifice of the sergeant was a noble and rare thing. But, you know, for all of its rarity and excellence, the love of the sergeant falls far short of God's agape love. It was for his comrade, his friend, that the sergeant died, but Christ died for his
enemies. He sacrificed himself for those who spat upon him, and beat him with their fists, and who nailed him to a cross upon which he died. And he did this when even his closest followers did not understand what he was doing; when he knew his sacrifice for them on the cross was crushing their expectations of him as their Messiah; when he knew most would never accept his sacrifice for them.
John 1:10-13
10 He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him.
11 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.
12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God,
13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
Romans 5:6-11
6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.
7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—
8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.
10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.
11 More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
1 John 4:9-11
9 In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.
10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.
It is from God's own incredible, selfless love that He intends we should serve Him. And when we do, we don't get discouraged in our service, we don't get exhausted in our enthusiasm for helping others, and we don't need others to recognize our service. It is enough that as we serve, we do so "as unto the Lord," whose pleasure in our service for him is the ultimate aim of all of our good works.
Is this you?
God's love has an eternal view, as well, extending beyond our lives on earth to the forever that follows. Any service to God that neglects eternity, focusing solely upon the here-and-now, is not service that loves as God loves. What use educating, and feeding, and clothing the needy so that they are merely more comfortable on their way to hell? This isn't godly love. When we bend ourselves to serving only such temporal, short-sighted and immediate concerns, we cease to love after the manner of God, departing from service for Him that He accepts.
2 Corinthians 4:3
3 But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost:
Matthew 16:26
26 For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?
2 Corinthians 5:10-11
10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.
11 Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others...
Romans 2:3-11
3 Do you suppose, O man—you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself—that you will escape the judgment of God?
4 Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?
5 But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.
6 He will render to each one according to his works:
7 to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life;
8 but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury.
9 There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek,
10 but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek.
11 For God shows no partiality.
Do you want to love and serve in an eternal, truly God-honoring way? Share the Gospel with the lost. Be the hands and heart of God to those who are perishing, who stand every moment under the terrible jeopardy of eternal hell. Jesus is their Savior and, as one of his, it is your privilege and responsibility to tell them so. You show more love and do more good by sharing the Gospel than you will ever do tending tomatoes in a garden intended to feed the poor. "The poor you will always have with you," Jesus said. The opportunity to be salt and light for Christ, being used by God to share the saving truth of the Gospel with the lost, has a time-limit: Your comparatively short, earthly life will come to an end. Do you make the most of it culturing lettuce and pouring soup into bowls?
Romans 10:13-15
13 For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
14 How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?
15 And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!”
Mark 16:15
15 And he said unto them, Go into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.
There is, of course, a place for meeting the physical, temporal needs of others. But that place always must follow behind meeting the eternal needs of the lost. Too often, though, there is only an ostensible Christ-related purpose for charitable activity; lip service is given to Christ but he is hidden away from view as food, clothing and education is offered instead from those who claim to be his followers. Genuine love for Christ our Savior and Lord will inevitably lead to evangelism and to the making of disciples of Jesus. When this ceases in a "Christian ministry," when evangelism is marginalized, it no longer can claim to love as Christ loves, to be in service to God. Be wary, then, of investing yourself in community service that doesn't have the Gospel and its proclamation as its chief end.
