by Sean Lim
17 January 2010
Involved for God?
Two Sundays ago, the youths in Klang gathered together to plan our activities for this year. Our goal this year is to “grow closer to God and to one another”, as was our goal last year. We have also made the goal of the ministry team ours as well, that is “Involve God” and “Involved for God”.
Reviewing the things we planned for last year and recalling how some of them went, I felt that at times, we have lost sight of the goal we have set for ourselves. From time to time, we have to constantly remind ourselves that the church is not like any other social organization out there in this world. Its purpose for existence is not the same, and in fact, very much different. Hence, the events that the church organizes will also be of a different objective as compared to that of the world’s social organizations.
We need to remember that the church does not exist to meet the petty needs of society, nor are we are here to provide entertainment, or to give free food to satisfy people’s bellies, for there are other organizations which are already doing that. So then, what is the work of the church?
Bro. Tze Wei summed it up well when he said that there are two main areas as far as the work of the church is concerned – converting and teaching. We convert people, and teach them to observe all things (Matt 28:19-20), and they in turn go out to convert others, and the cycle is repeated, and everything else that we do revolves around this two main works, either to convert or to teach. Hence, for the youths, our planned activities will revolve around these two works, as well as our goals to “grow closer to God and to one another” and to “Involve God” and be “Involved for God”.
I guess we can see here, that the word “God” is common in all three of our goals, and rightly so, for that is what we should be emphasizing! This is the Lord’s church, the Lord’s body, and therefore we are here to carry out the Lord’s work! We are here to please God, not to please men (Gal 1:10). Everything we do, we do for God, and not for others, not even for ourselves! This is something we have to keep in mind. When we serve God, it is not unto our glory, but unto God’s! Our attitude should be like the servant in Jesus’ example in Luke 17:7-10, where after we have done all that we have do, at the end of the day, we say, “We are but unprofitable servants. We have done what was our duty to do.”
Now the question we need to ask ourselves is are we making the effort to help the church with regards to its works? Are we getting involved for God? Our Lord Jesus said in Matt 9:37-38, “The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.” Indeed, there is much that needs to be done. Let us make the effort to help the church in its work to grow; knowing that if we continue to do so, we have a crown of life waiting for us when life on Earth is over.
May the Lord bless us all.
