What do I enjoy doing?

This fourth question is again linked to the previous one: what do I enjoy doing? Psalm 100:1–5 says, Serve the Lord with gladness! Remember the foot‑washing. Some of our work for God is going to be tedious, difficult, and unpleasant. I enjoy part of preparing for preaching, but there are parts of it I do not enjoy at all. I do not enjoy tracing Hebrew verbs through big, bold dictionaries, but it has to be done. I do not enjoy checking out thirty or forty biblical references to make sure that what I am saying is right. It is tedious. It is time consuming, but it has to be done. There are committees that I do not enjoy doing. There are letters that I do not enjoy answering. And that is true of all of you. There are parts of our work for God where there is no other way around it—it is not particularly interesting, but it has to be done, so we do it. So, we must not avoid such work. It has to be done and every one of us should be doing some of that.

But I want to say, to balance that, that most of our Christian service is not like that and should not be like that. and I would advice you to beware of the hair‑shirt mentality. Grace Edmond writes the idea has somehow crept into Christian circles that doing what God wants you to do is always unpleasant. Don’t we think that? If I would say to you, Now listen, are you prepared to do what God wants you to do? you will not say, Well, I suppose so. No, you would say, Yes! Yes! Of course, I am! Why not? Serve the Lord with gladness.

I would encourage every one of you to dream dreams and to see visions. As long as you are prepared for the eldership to occasionally tell you that your dream is daft. But you should dream dreams. What would I love to do for God? Have you ever asked yourself that? What would I really, really love to do for God? What would excite me to the depth of my being? What would be a dream come true for me in Christian service?

I wonder if we are quenching the Holy Spirit. We set up our programs and our activities, and think that we have to do all that. There may be people in your church, who have got burdens, dreams, thrilling and exciting ideas that would fulfil them, and that would energise us all, but we just do not have the atmosphere where those suggestions would be welcomed.

Now, I know that three quarters of my dreams are just that, and I have to use common sense and reality in the position when I cannot do it. But they are not all like that. Consult your longings. Consult your dreams. God often places such inclinations within us. One writer puts it beautifully, the place where God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet. I believe it is true of many of us. I believe it is true of the Sunday school teachers and the youth leaders. Yes, at times it is annoying and tedious. At times you think, I wish I did not have this class. But then you get there and you see the children, or the young people; you see their faces; you listen to what they have to say; and you see them learning truths, and then you think, I love doing this. I am setting a mark on these young people for eternity. This is a wonderful thing to be doing! What do you love doing? Serve the Lord with gladness.¹

Edward Donnelly