Faithful servants never retire. You can retire from your career, but you will never retire from serving God. – Rick Warren
I was recently in the city of Euskirchen, Germany, for a leadership team gathering for the European organization I work with. I’ve never been there and one of my first thoughts was that we needed to do a prayer walk through the town. I enthusiastically sent that message to someone else on our prayer team who I knew would be at the gathering so I could at least try to hold myself accountable to the opportunity.
One evening during the gathering, our host invited everyone to go into town and see the sights. I’m usually eager to see any new place, but had some work I needed to do and opted to stay behind. The following day I realized, to my dismay, that I had missed a perfect opportunity to pray over Euskirchen and to even invite others to do so with me. The words “regret” and “selfish” came to mind as I chastised myself for overlooking that obvious opportunity to ask God to bless Euskirchen with vibrant believers and churches.
And that small blip on the radar of listening to God’s guidance made me consider the many times I miss opportunities to bless others, to serve others, to love on others, to be the hands and feet of Jesus to others. How many times have I bypassed, overlooked, even ignored the multiple times God brings someone or some situation across my path and I neglect to act? I’m usually playing catch up in these situations by praying afterwards, asking God’s forgiveness for the many times I ignore his promptings and miss my opportunities to share Jesus.
And sadly, I just always want to fix the situation before I pray about it. But I don’t really have a solution in and of myself to remedy the situation. But what I do know is that God has things for me to do, people I can serve, needs that should be met – but I have to be tuned in on his channel to not miss my opportunities.
That requires a power beyond myself – a reliance on God himself who will do the prompting when he wants me to love and to serve…a sacrifice of time and thought that focuses on God’s work in this world, not on my selfish desires. It’s a paradigm shift, as we say, to put others first – always – and listen for the voice of authority in my life that puts me in the right place, at the right time, to be doing the right work for the Father.
Don't Waste Your Retirement 