As I pondered the question asked of Compassion Bloggers, I find there is no one verse, but in fact many or rather the whole New Testament where Jesus calls us all to serve as He did.
“Love thy neighbour as yourself”
(Luke 10:27)
These words appears numerous times in the New testament and have been words that have been seeded deep in my heart since I was a child. I expect the question asked many times has been who is my neighbour and Jesus would answer “who ever I put before you”, adult, child, from any nation -they may be beside you in a shop or they may be the innocent face of a child trapped in poverty, hungry and cold waiting to find a sponsor.
Graham Kendrick wrote a song in 1984 “The Servant King” and God has used this song in my heart to call me to serve Him. The words are the most powerful lyrics I have heard reminding us that Gods son came to earth to serve and that is what we are also called to do, when we serve others we are serving God.
“Chorus: This is our God, the servant king,
He calls us now to follow Him,
To bring our lives as a daily offering,
Of worship to the servant king.
Verse 4: So let us learn how to serve,
And in our lives enthrone Him,
Each other’s needs to prefer,
For it is Christ we are serving”
As a child I wanted to be a missionary working with the children in the developing world. Although that never happened I knew those children were my passion, my calling. I may not have reached those distant shores but have always sponsored children. The day I received my very first pay I sponsored my first child Carla from Honduras. Over the 14 years I sponsored her my love for theses beautiful children trapped in poverty grew. I knew God wanted me to do more but felt He was calling me to something else, not the group I was sponsoring with. I stumbled on Compassion International one night (maybe not stumbled but guided by God) and I knew a new adventure was about to begin, this is where God wanted me to be.
I sponsored two little girls and discovered a whole new meaning to writing to your children. Wess Stafford's vision of helping children matched my own and the fire in me began to grow. I discovered Compassion had a correspondence programme for children sponsored by people who couldn’t or didn’t want to write and enquired about being a correspondent for Compassion. In a very short time God filled my life with many beautiful children that He wanted me to share His love with and my Compassion family continues to grow.
If you had said to me a few years ago, in 5 years time you will sponsor several children and write to almost 30, I would have laughed and said that wouldn’t be possible there was no way I could do that as I wouldn’t have the time or resources for all those children. The more time I give to the Lord to encourage His precious children the more time I seem to have, the letters I receive bless me far more than these little ones can know and makes me very humble that God has entrusted me with these remarkable children millions of miles away.
Blogging is my next step in serving our Lord, maybe I can inspire others to give of their time and a little of their money to one of God’s precious children enabling them to have a chance to thrive and make a difference in their world. We can’t all be missionaries but we can all make a difference “one child at a time”. To give your life to God and be His servant brings more joy and rewards than anything given in earthly terms and a peace knowing that you can make a difference.
