30 Days of Serving & Sharing: Faithfulness & Joy
by Sally Matheny
Today we’ll relish the last portion of our four-part series, 30 Days of Serving & Sharing: Faithfulness & Joy. If you missed the previous posts, they offer a total of sixty ideas of family activities. I’ve included the links to those at the bottom.
Serving with Faithfulness
“It is only by fidelity in little things that a true and constant love of God can be distinguished from a passing fervor of spirit.”
-Francois Fenelon
November is typically a month when people pause with more thoughts of thankfulness. The challenge here was to couple that attitude with action.
We’re grateful for food, so some have shared groceries with those less fortunate. We are thankful for family, so others may have invited someone who is lonely to join them at an event. Hopefully, your family has found some special ways to serve and share with others over the past thirty days.
After November, should we settle back in our recliners, content that we’ve done our giving for the year?
I hope not.
What’s Next?
As I’ve mentioned before, there are many days when it requires most of our energy just to care for our own families. It seems there’s little time to spare for serving those outside of the family.
However, there are ways we can faithfully hold the course. Even if our actions seem small to us, they mean the world to others.
Year-Long Projects
Here are a few suggestions for things our families can do more consistently throughout the year.
Perhaps you donated to a food bank. Is it possible to donate every other month?
Encourage your family members to take turns waiting on new visitors at your church. Be the warm welcome. Introduce them to people. Show them around. Perhaps sit close by during worship in case they have any questions.
Set aside a time each week to call and check on someone who lives alone.
Rather than make cards for residents of an assisted living center once a year, encourage your children to make cards more frequently.
Once a month, compose a handwritten letter of encouragement to someone.
Take time to chat a few minutes with a sales associate whom you encounter frequently. Be mindful of their work, but if business is slow, try to build a friendship.
If you’ve given money to a certain ministry, or to missionaries who visited your church, prayerfully consider sponsoring them for a year.
Did you use a few of your vacation days to help with disaster relief this year? Why not set aside one or two Saturdays every quarter to volunteer with a disaster relief team, a blood bank, or something similar?
Rather than waiting to buy items for an Operation Christmas Child shoebox in November next year, consider gathering items every month between now and then. You’ll be surprised by how many boxes you can fill this way. Remind your kids to look for small items for the boxes that are on sale throughout the year. They may begin to focus more on that when you’re shopping rather than what they want for themselves.
Sharing Joy
No matter what plops on the doorstep of our lives, everlasting joy can always reside within. That’s worth sharing, don’t you think?
Happiness results from what happens. Joy is not happiness. It doesn’t depend on our circumstances. We will experience great suffering and sorrow. Yet, joy will remain rooted deep within.
Some of you, dear friends, are still seeking a joy that will remain rooted, one that will last. And some of us just need our minds refreshed about what we already have.
This quote by Octavius Winslow sums it up so well:
“The religion of Christ is the religion of joy. Christ came to take away our sins, to roll off our curse, to unbind our chains, to open our prison house, to cancel our debt; in a word, to give us the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. Is not this joy?
Where can we find a joy so real, so deep, so pure, so lasting? There is every element of joy—deep, ecstatic, satisfying, sanctifying joy—in the gospel of Christ. The believer in Jesus is essentially a happy man. The child of God is, from necessity, a joyful man. His sins are forgiven, his soul is justified, his person is adopted, his trials are blessings, his conflicts are victories, his death is immortality, his future is a heaven of inconceivable, unthought-of, untold, and endless blessedness. With such a God, such a Savior, and such a hope, is he not, ought he not, to be a joyful man?”
-Octavius Winslow
Giving the Utmost
As you and I and our families discover ways to serve others, we’ll meet people’s needs and bring happiness to many. But what we offer to folks is temporary, even if we’re faithful to serve them in some way for a lifetime.
We are unable to give anyone everlasting joy. However, we can point them to the Source of our joy.
You know the saying about giving a man a fish and you feed him for a day, but teach him how to fish and he’ll never go hungry again? The same thing applies here. Do a kind deed and you’ll make a person happy for a while. Share the love and hope of Christ with them and they’ll have joy for an eternity—should they choose to accept it.
Sharing Faith or Fear
Here’s the thing. We often work hard doling out plenty of good “fish,” but we avoid sharing the lifesaving news about the Fisher of men.
An opportunity to share the gospel may not lend itself every time we do a kind deed. The timing may not be right. But we often use that as an excuse to never share the hope of an eternal life of joy. In order to share the joy, it requires sharing about the sorrow and repentance of sin. Sometimes that’s not easy to do.
I know, because I get skittish, too. Fears filter in and bushel over the light of my joy.
But the living God continues to work. His Word gently fans the shy embers within me. He shows me the strength and courage He has given to others. It’s there for me as well, should I choose to accept it.
It’s there for you, too.
In the meantime, the kids, whom we are teaching how to serve and share, are waiting and watching for the joy.
Get more ideas for ways your family can serve and share with others in the rest of the posts from the Serving and Sharing series:
Core Christianity.com posted an article you may like: 7 Ways to Share the Gospel Without Being a Jerk
