Whatever It Takes

Whaterver it takes! That has been my motto since I was about 6 years old. Ok not really but it has been becoming more and more my motto the older I get.

So what did this Youth Pastor do yesterday. Well I have been preaching on "Customer Servant", and we have our interns coming into town this weekend so I decided to put what I am preaching into practice.

The day began by getting up at 5:30am with a little Word and a little Bible and then a quick trip over to my brothers house to pick up my care which I let him borrow (jee what a great brother I am). This process took a little longer than I expected so I did not arrive at the Intern guys house until about 7:50am.

Once I was at the intern guys house I began by pulling weeds and and mowing their lawn. The cool thing about this is that I was not alone but Jabin and Lauren were working right along side me (thank God becuase this place needed a little spring cleaning only it aint spring). We moved from the yard to taking some stuff up to the pastors house and then a truck full of stuff to the dump.

The dump - now this brings up a whole bunch of seperate issues, the main one being this. Why is it that when you go to many of the dumps that the guys that acutally work inside with all the trash are wearing masks and sometimes even respirators but they feel completly fine with just letting us run around in thier breathing in all the fumes in with nothing covering our faces. - Things that make you say HMM!

From the dump we made a quick stop at Red Robin (nothing like a good burger after being at the dump) and then went over to the Intern girls house. It is amazing to me how much cleaner girls are then guys. Anyway; Their we picked up a bunk bed to take to the guys house, pulled some weeds and consolidated some garbage. Ah ha this is why the girls house is cleaner. Rather than just leaving the trash sit around everywhere they take it all out to the garage - Man just one more step and the garbage would actually be where it is supposed to be, out on the side walk where the garbage guy can pick it up. So anyway we took two bunk beds down, took one over to the guys house, grabed another bed from the guys house and took it to the girls house, filled up the truck with trash, made another dump run, back to the guys house, back to the office and YES MY DAY OF PRACTICING WHAT I PREACH IS DONE!

I am know driving home at 4:30pm and thinking about how great of a servant I am and how great a job I did today and how everyone should appreciate the work I put in today and - WOO HOO LOOK AT ME, I am the worlds best servant. Then it happens, I get interupted by the Holy Spirit and I knew what was comming. He said, "Ben, why did you do what you did today" (ouch). I said nothing. He then said to me, "If you are doing it becuase you needed to practice what you preach or so you can have other look at you and say, 'Wow what a great servant', then you have done it for the wrong reasosn and it would have been better to not have done it at all"!

So what is the point to this last paragraph. Simple. We must be customer servants and do whatever it takes becuase this is LIFE. The Bible says to do all things unto the Lord and not unto man. Unfotrunatly we often times do things to recieve praise from man and not becuase it is what God requires of us. To be honest with you I did not want to be cleaning those houses or pulling weeds I wanted to be doing what I wanted to do. But once again the Holy Spirit came and showed me an area in my life that I needed to work on. The greatest thing I could have done and the greatest thing I needed to do was exactly what I did and through this Pastor learned that serving is not somthing I am doing to show off or practice what I am preaching, but it is what I was created to do. So I will continue to do whatever it takes not just becuase it is what it takes but it is what I was created to do.

Dream Big and Stay in Motion
PB