Most every day for weeks a puppy appeared at my office door delivering a package of animal crackers. The small canine was powered by 2 AA batteries and the kindness of my neighbor across the hall. Ron would clip a twenty-five-cent bag of cookies to the puppy’s tail and point him in my direction. He loved to serve others.
Here on the campus of AFA, that fire within Ron to serve led him to an assortment of good works, everything from shoveling snow off the sidewalks to spending countless hours at our fundraisers making sure that the volunteers had what they needed. Ron excelled at serving others.
Maybe you know someone like my friend Ron. Saints like him diligently use their talent, time, and spiritual gifts for kingdom matters.
Perhaps their faithful efforts should cause us to pause and measure our own zeal for the things God has called us to do.
Are we settling for ordinariness, or are we squeezing the most out of each kingdom-advancing opportunity?
Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might (Ecclesiastes 9:10).
I think the apostle Paul is an excellent biblical example of what it means to serve with zeal. He was confident about his service to the Lord to the point that he was willing to say to those he ministered to: “Be imitators of me, just as I also am of Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1). Paul was hopeful that those he mentored would look at him and imitate all that they saw that was like Christ. Surely that would have been a life lived at an ambitious pace.
Consider what Paul expected of his brother and sisters who made up the church at Philippi:
And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve the things that are excellent, in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ; having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God (Philippians 1:9-11, emphasis mine).
To the church in Thessalonica, Paul wrote:
Finally then, brethren, we request and exhort you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us instruction as to how you ought to walk and please God (just as you actually do walk), that you excel still more (1 Thessalonians 4:1, emphasis mine).
So, we take note of those around us who are running at a pace worthy of imitating, and we look at Paul—inspired by God—challenging believers to demonstrate a love that abounds ‘more and more’ and to ‘excel still more’ when it comes to their already productive walk.
And then we respond to these patterns with the appropriate application to our lives. Join me in considering these four applications:
- Draw encouragement from those who are helpful examples.
- Take your place alongside believers who excel at what God has called them to do.
- Stretch forward, fueled by the spiritual enrichment that comes from being rooted in God’s Word.
- Rely on God’s strength, not your own, to accomplish all that He has for you to do.
Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God (Hebrews 12:1-2).
(Ron was director of the Localization Division of American Family Radio. He passed away March 2, 2024, while struggling with cancer.)
