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Pastor · Sunday Schedule · FBC
News
2004
From the Pastor
The Best Volunteer Ever
There is in all of us the desire to be useful. It is part of our nature, who we are, as created by God. The appeal of volunteerism is that it can help fulfill that desire within us. We volunteer because it connects to that desire to be useful.
One would then think that by volunteering we would feel more fulfilled, more energized, because we are attending to a basic need within ourselves - the need to be useful. What happens, however, is often the reverse of our expectation. Volunteering zaps us. It robs us of our energy. It takes away our enthusiasm. We feel drained and burnt out.
What happened?
What happened is we didn’t listen to the whole of ourselves. We heard the desire in us to be useful but we didn’t listen long enough to hear how we are meant to fulfill that desire. We didn’t listen to our passions, the unique contours of our life that make us who we are and not another.
There is a unique way in which God has placed the fulfillment of His will in your life that can only be found in the hidden recesses of who you are as a person. Find your passions and you will find God’s will for your life, and finding those passions you will also find the gifts or talents within you for expressing those passions, and in expressing your passions through the gifts God has given you, you will find your usefulness.
The best volunteers are the ones who are living out their passions. They love what they are doing. They may get tired, they may have to endure hardship, but never do they get whipped because they are driven by the excitement of the task; they are driven by a sense of Divine Light within them that illuminates all the tools they have within them for doing what they feel called to do. But, again, I reiterate, that call is lodged in the discovery of your passions.
The church should be the place that helps you discover your passion and then helps you nurture and use the gifts that express the passion and empower you to fulfill the basic human desire for usefulness.
It is wrong to pigeonhole people. Instead, as the church, we should be saying, How can we help you unleash your passions, how can we help you discover your gifts, how can we help affirm you in your desire to be useful? How can we help you be the best volunteer ever - whatever it might be.
I have seen volunteers do remarkable things - spend hours in committee meetings to bring to fruition the fulfillment of a cherished project, I have watched others give up vacation days to take part in a mission trip, or devote countless evenings to rehearse for a community concert or play. To the outside world this kind of dedication might seem crazy, and it is slightly, but only because for most of the world there is no passion. They have lost the Light within them. They don’t know what it is to give of themselves because they have yet to find themselves, they have yet to find their passion, which for me, in the end, is God’s Holy Spirit, bringing us to ourselves and pointing us to the way he has called us to. . .
“let your light shine before others, so that
they may see your good works and give glory
to your Father in heaven.” (Matt. 5:16)
Dr. David W. Andersen
          
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