As all of us are aware, there is a global pandemic. It has touched all of our daily lives in some way or another. People are working from home, homeschooling their children, churches have gone totally online; life is different. One of the biggest changes for many people, myself included, is how we have gotten closer to God during this crisis. We have become more in-tune with His voice, we have been reading Scripture more, tuning into online services, listening to podcasts. In the stillness that now is life, we have opened our ears to hear Him.
Before the pandemic hit my area, God had already started dealing with me in one particular area that needed His attention and His touch: performance. Performance in the sense of doing tasks with the focus of pleasing others and gaining their approval.
I hadn’t realized how much I was operating under performance until God pointed it out to me. Performance can be a tricky thing. I like doing a good job, the best job I can. I thrive on doing a job well. There is nothing wrong with doing a task well. The issue comes when the reason you’re doing the task becomes more about pleasing others than pleasing God. And that is where I had unknowingly slipped into.
The problem with performing to please others is that when you make a mistake, and you will because you’re not perfect, your self-worth can take a huge hit. This happened to me more than I care to admit, but one particular situation floored me for over a week. I couldn’t stop replaying the scenario in my head. I started overthinking everything, every conversation, everything that came before and after. I immediately felt worthless. I began to believe that God was wrong about me. I wasn’t gifted. I wasn’t talented. I had nothing to offer. In short: I spiraled. And God, in the only way that He can, reached down and pulled me out before I drowned in a sea of self-pity and self-doubt.
One particular day when I was in the darkest place in my thoughts, and I just couldn’t stop crying, God spoke to me: “If you stopped doing everything in this moment and never served again, I would still love you.”
That sentence wrecked me. With those words, God showed me His heart. He loved me just because. There is nothing I can do or could ever do to earn His love. Even if I never accepted Jesus as my Savior, God would still love me. God loves the saint and the sinner alike. He loves me just because He does. Period. No and, if or but about it. He just loves me. He just LOVES ME. Even if I make a critical mistake: He loves me. Even if I just sat in a chair Sunday after Sunday: He loves me. Even if I never did another task for anyone else ever again: He loves me.
I wanted to sit in that moment forever, bask in His love and never leave it. I was looking forward to the rest the stay-at-home order promised when the pandemic hit my city. I had a Bible picked out, several books, blocks of time I could just sit and be with God. I was eager to just be still.
It didn’t quite work out that way, though. In the crisis, other people were grasping for the same thing I was. People were flocking to find hope and comfort in the crisis. As such, the work of the global church vamped up. We had to adapt to church online and produce like we had never produced before.
In this moment, I had a choice: do I sit or do I serve? God would love me the same if I chose to sit and just bask in His presence. He had told me so. And it was in that moment that I realized something heart changing: because of His love for me, I wanted to serve.
In the serving, in the increase of responsibility and tasks, I found the core of why I ever started serving to begin with. Because HE loves ME. Because He loves me the way He does and doesn’t demand for me to do to earn His love, I wanted to serve HIM. Because there wasn’t anything I could do to make Him love me more, I wanted to serve Him. Because there isn’t a mistake I could make that would make Him love me less, I wanted to serve Him.
I realized that I had unintentionally placed the focus on my serving in earning His love and in the validation of others. There is no way to earn His love. There is nothing we can do to earn it, because He loves us just because He does. Just the same, the validation of others is nice, and it’s needed, but it cannot be the source of why we serve. It cannot be what propels us to keep going, to keep pushing, to keep doing, because one day it won’t be enough. That validation won’t be there and your self-worth will falter and you will crumble.
The source of why we serve must be rooted in His love for us and our love for Him. We have to remember why we serve. We don’t serve to earn His love, or validation from others, or self-worth. We serve simply because He loves us, and when we bask in His love, accept it and believe it, there is nothing we wouldn’t do for Him.
“I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance…I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name’s sake, and you have not grown weary, but I have this against you: that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember where you have fallen, and repent.” Revelation 2:1-29.
In this Scripture, we see a people who are doing the work. They are being faithful, enduring, holding onto God’s truths and doing the work that needs to be done without fail, but they lost what was most important: the love they first had.
Serving during this pandemic has renewed me. It has reminded me of what HE says about me. It has brought me back to my first love. Now that I have remembered the love I first had in serving, I never want to serve any other way again. I wanted rest, but God wanted to renew and refresh me through serving with a pure heart, a heart aligned with His. That is the rest I needed and my heart craved.
A heart willing to serve not for any other reason but one: Love.
Cinder Gasca 