A Call To Serve Ministries of Iowa - Latest Blog Entries

How Will You Serve in 2010?

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 15:53:00 -0600

Blessings to you in the New Year! I hope you and your loved ones finished 2009 on a high note and have experienced a great start to 2010.

Between Christmas and New Year’s I got the opportunity to go on a mission trip down to Mexico with Mission Walk International. It was a great experience, one magnified by being able to do it with my wife and two children. There is something about serving as a family that makes the experience extra special.

We worked with the team from Mission Walk to transport, sort, deliver, and distribute Christmas gifts to children in Reynosa, Mexico. Working with local resources, churches, and children’s homes, Mission Walk takes pictures of each child, catalogs what each child wants as a gift, and works to match each child with a US family who will purchase and wrap a gift for them. They transport all of these gifts from the Midwest down to Mission, Texas, and subsequently take them over the border daily for three weeks.

A couple of things that impress me with each visit to deliver gifts. Children and families will show up to the church an hour or more early on the day we’re coming. On top of that, the kids will sit patiently for 5-15 minutes until all the youth have gifts BEFORE opening their own. Lastly, for many of the children (and especially the parents) the photo with the gift is just as big of a present as the gift itself. And for those that received family pictures from their US gift givers, they smiled at a chance to “meet” their brothers and sisters in Christ 1300 miles away.

As heartwarming as this experience is, it also makes you realize how many little things we take for granted. Sanitary living conditions. Internet access. Public bathrooms. Paved roads. Regular garbage pickup. Storm sewers. Shoes. A Bible of your own.

I walked away from the experience with three main reinforcements:

Our brothers and sisters in Christ don’t always live inside the borders of our city, county, state, or country. In Luke 10:29 Jesus was asked “Who is my neighbor?” and he provided the parable of the Good Samaritan. His point was that everyone is our neighbor, but sometimes we only look at that in context to where we reside. Yes, we need to serve where we are, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we should consider those with needs outside our communities as “someone else’s” neighbor. For 2010… serve where you are, but be willing to change where you’ll “be”.
Service is ultimately an act of love born out of a growing relationship with those you are serving and with God. Without God, service is selfish and usually driven by a need to feel necessary. Without a relationship with those you are assisting, service is work done outside your “day job” on someone else’s behalf. Servant-hearted love is the fruit of these growing relationships with God and your neighbor and a natural extension of the growth going on inside you. For 2010… Build stronger relationships with your current neighbors, neighbors you don’t know, and with God by spending time with them; service will naturally flow from this.
The power and importance of the Bible is sometimes lost on those who have access to it every day. A Pastor we visited explained how great their need was for Spanish Bibles for those they were shepherding and in many cases, bringing to Christ. For many of us, a bible, even for the unbeliever, is within easy reach (or a click away on the Internet). But those he was serving have little or no access to a bible of their own. For 2010…help spread the Good News to all of God’s people, wherever they are, in whatever way you can.

As we approach the 2010 resolution season, let us resolve to focus on how we serve and realize that the "how" and the "who" are usually more important than the "what" and the "when."

Open Hands and Willing Feet

Sat, 17 May 2008 10:17:00 -0500

Sometimes when I look at where God has brought us, I wonder how it happened so fast. It seems like only yesterday that we started this journey and I feel a long way from that booth at Pella's Dairy Queen where ACTS was hatched.

But recently I realized that as fast as this has moved, and as far as we have come, a good part of this journey I was dragging my feet. I was not standing still mind you, but I was definitely not marching forward where God was leading.

And although our whole group is built around using our hands to help others, I can also point to times where my hands were too busy grasping on to things that were meaningless and not open to assist with the needs around me.

Worldly? Sure. Selfish? Often...ok...more often than often. :)

But meaningless? Looking back now, absolutely.

Ecclesiastes 1 does a better job than I ever could of explaining this. Don't take my word for it... take His Word for it.

These things are meaningless because we do them for ourselves. We desire to get something, fix something, achieve something or perform something that can be attributed to us. We want to leave a mark, leave a trace, or leave a legacy so we're respected, remembered, or revered.

But when "we" are in what we do, we usually leave little room for God.

We see our lives as a journey, and we're driving the RV. We fill the RV with the people we like, all of our things for along the way, and if we're lucky, we leave just a bit of room on the dash (between the highway maps and the beef jerky) for God.

The problem is God is not a compass, a road map, a passenger, the highway, or the RV. God doesn't play a secondary role.

God's the driver. He's got his own "rig" and he's hitting the road. We can get on and take a seat any time, and because God is forgiving, he'll let us off at whatever stop we want---even when it isn't the destination he had in mind.

The difference is he doesn't leave us in the dust on the side of the gravel road. Sometimes he idles, following closely behind us, in case we change our minds. Other times he circles the block just to give us a bit of time to realize we have no idea where we are going.

When I was a kid (pre-seat belt law days) my dad would sometimes let me sit on his lap while he was driving his old Ford truck. While he worked the peddles, he'd let ME run the steering wheel (with a bit of guidance from his experienced hands). With a look of pure joy on my face (and sheer terror on the face of those we met) we'd drive slowly down the gravel roads of Harvey. Granted, I wasn't truly driving, but I felt like we were working together to get to our destination.

So many years later I realize that my dad took a page from the travel guide of my Heavenly Father. Sometimes, when I decide to get back on His bus and settle into my seat, he invites me up to "drive" in His lap.

And like so many years ago in that old Ford, I can't stop smiling.

When God Speaks

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 19:45:00 -0500

I have found myself in a number of conversations lately on the topic of how God speaks to each of us. I'm not sure if that's because many of us think we're hearing something, or whether it's because our lives are just so "noisy" we're worried we're missing it entirely.

I've had the opportunity to read on the topic, speak to those I respect, and even reflect a bit on my life, but I'm not sure I can totally answer the questions that come up most often on the subject.

What does God's "voice" sound like? How do I know it is Him? How will He speak to me (and when)?

I've heard some say that God talks to us in a whisper and we just need to quiet ourselves enough to hear it. Looking back I can recognize plenty of times when I was doing much too much talking and not enough listening and never heard God at all.

Some say that when God needs to get our attention He is not afraid to make His voice heard. Although I'm not sure that God has screamed at me, I can say there were a few times that he raised His voice to make sure I knew He was serious.

Others share that God doesn't speak to them in words at all. They hear His "voice" in nature, in circumstances, a verse in their study bible, or in other people. All too often my prayers have been answered by a song on the radio, the words of my children, or a gaze at a clear star-lit sky. God has used them all to speak to me when I need to hear Him.

I know God speaks in all these ways, and likely other ways I'm either neglecting or not yet recognizing.

The question isn't, "Does God speak?" I think the question is, "Am I willing to try and listen?"

Looking back, God had been leading me to ACTS for years. Sure, he didn't say, "Joel...I want you to start a service organization that ministers to those who need help." But had I been listening I would have heard Him say...

"Why don't you stop and see if they need help?"

"You've got plenty and they have little...can't your share?"

"Why don't you introduce yourself?"

"You know how to do that...why not show them?"

"Why don't you take a class on Christian leadership?"

I'm still learning how to listen to God well. And like any skill, if I'm not willing to put in the work to get better at it, I'll quickly end up back where I started...NOT good at it.

And unlike my golf and racquetball games, calculus, and ancient Greek history, I think I'll put in the time to keep from getting rusty.

A Call To Serve

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 11:33:00 -0600

In early 2006, neither one of us knew where God was leading us. All we knew was that a common interest, discovered in a bible study discussion, raised a level of excitement and expectancy that we had never felt before.

It started with a simple question. "What would you do if you could do anything, without worry for money or failure?"

Each of us had scribbled our answers down independently, meeting only to discuss them in the local Dairy Queen over a chicken strip basket and a blizzard. The question had been probing, but our answers has seemed not all that exciting (to ourselves).

But surprisingly, we both answered the same thing...almost to the letter.

"I'd like to be able to drop everything and help those in need, regardless of the circumstance, and do what I can for them."

Odd? Sure. Miraculous? No, there were probably more astonishing things that could happen. But why were we so energized? Why was it that we couldn't stop smiling? Why couldn't we stop talking about it?

Over the next few weeks we kept meeting, sometimes at the DQ (hey, blizzards fuel creativity!), sometimes over lunch at our desks. We were trying to figure out what all this meant. How could God use us to serve others?

A plan was hatched. We would go searching for our first "project". Something we could take on together to test the waters. If it went well, then it must be a "God thing". If we failed, well, at least we tried.

As luck would have it...no, check that, as God would have it...we were made aware of a couple in need of assistance. The project was straightforward, it was within our skills, and the timing was perfect. Time to go to work.

God lead us to call on a few more volunteers, many of which accepted, and we met briefly before heading to the project to talk, explain our purpose, and of course, pray.

By the end of the night, we'd gotten everything on the agenda done. We had a lot of fun working together and getting to know one another. And best of all, it brought joy to see the results of our work, both to those serving and to those served.

A year and a half later and a little has changed. Our "interest" has turned into a regular occurrence, with over 70 projects completed since the first one in 2006. We've served people in 6 communities, two counties, and given back over 700 volunteer hours along the way. God took a two person mission and turned into a volunteer group 30+ strong.

Ask us what led us to create A Call To Serve Ministries of Iowa and you'll get another unified response. We had little to do with it. We just answered God's call to serve...He did the rest.