Away- Hebrews 10:8-10
8 When he said above, “You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings” (these are offered according to the law),9 then he added, “Behold, I have come to do your will.” He does away with the first in order to establish the second. 10 And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
My eyes strain to shut. I wrestle against sleep’s tug to pull me under and back down to my pillow. My eyes roll, unable to focus on my cell phone’s screen alight with my morning devotional. My brain starts spinning with a million reasons why I should go back to sleep. But my will and my spirit fight back. No, I need to write.
Some days getting up at 4:45am, while it’s still dark, and, now that California has decided to maybe try on the season of Fall, cool and tingly, it feels like the largest sacrifice in the world to leave my snug-as-a-bug bed. To force each step away from my bedroom and down the dark hallway to the kitchen. To brew my coffee and eat my bacon and eye my laptop with a measure of contempt. I want the words to flow this morning. If just for once this didn’t have to feel like a struggle—physically with exhaustion, mentally against all the loud voices that tell me I’m not up for this, emotionally as I start to believe them.
I know I don’t have to write, only that I really do. God loves me no less sleeping in my bed until 7am than getting up before the sun. And though He loves me no less, when I am up and writing and working and using my gifts I love Him more. I feel connected to Him as the thoughts finally begin to trickle and I watch the words join up; serving out of my desire to know Him more, not my need to try to keep Him happy as if He were constantly disappointed with my shortcomings.
He knows my weaknesses and has already taken care of the many ways I will fail Him. Jesus came not to do away with the high standard to which we’ve been called, but to fulfill it once and for all. By completing His Father’s will we now are equipped to do the same.
How are you called to serve? Do you ever feel God is disappointed with your efforts? Why does the motivation of our service matter?