no.425 140629 Thank you for reminding me how to serve You

This morning, I got up earlier than I wanted because my parents were loud as they were getting ready for church. I was contemplating whether I should try to sleep a little more, or get up and do some work. There was a passage that was shared by my youth pastor and he strongly recommended that I read it, so I decide to get up and spend some time with God. It was from the last book of the Old Testament, Malachi. I thought it was interesting because it is one of the books in the Bible that I hardly read.

I just wanted to share a few things with you from Malachi 3: 6-18. It says in Malachi, that we are robbing God. At first, I wasn't sure what it meant. After reading another version of the Bible and reading commentaries, I came to understand that it meant that we are withholding something from God.  It doesn't necessarily mean that I am "stealing" money or a valuable object from God. It can also mean time or relationship, and everything else that God has give us to use it for God. God tells us to return these matters to God, if we want to received God's blessings. It is a straight forward thing but often times I fail to do this.

I also wanted to bring up the issue of serving God. With what kind of attitude did I serve God? Did I complain and grumble when I was serving Him? Or did I do with with the fear of the Lord? I realized that I've been physically and mentally tired from preparing for my mission trip and also preschool VBS, and that I've been complaining how tired and busy I was to my friends and family. Complaining about my circumstance is equal to questioning God's character. By doing that, we are putting ourselves above Him, thinking that we know better than our almighty God. It' saying that God doesn't know our circumstances, so we ought to figure something out by ourselves because who knows when God will respond our prayers, right?

I was reminded that I should be giving thanks to God who provided me with great opportunities to serve, and enjoying this time of preparation for Mexico and for VBS, as I only have a couple of weeks remaining. It was also a good time for me to look back at why I wanted to serve in these two teams, and also that I am doing all these things to please God.