The Joy of Serving God
Jeremy Walker serves as a pastor of Maidenbower Baptist Church in Crawley, England, and is married to Alissa, with whom he enjoys the blessing of three children. He has authored several books, and is grateful to preach, teach, and write as opportunity provides.
This post is adapted from Jeremy’s new 50-day devotional, A Word in Season: 50 Days of Hope for Hard Times. Click here to order your copy today: A Word in Season
Serve the Lord with gladness; come before His presence with singing.
Psalm 100:2
The hundredth psalm is an exuberant declaration of delight in God. It is entitled “A Psalm of Thanksgiving,” and it begins, “Make a joyful shout to the Lord, all you lands! Serve the Lord with gladness.” There is a bursting forth of delight and joy in the God of salvation. We are able to come to him. We are able to draw near to him. We belong to him. We enter into his very courts. We come into his residence, into his presence, and we find a God who is good, whose mercy is everlasting, and whose truth endures to all generations. Is it any wonder that we make a joyful shout to the Lord, and we serve him with gladness?
Is that our experience? Is that what we know of our service to God? We should serve him—it is right that we should. There is a duty involved in our response to the God of our salvation, but we ought to find joy in carrying out that duty. It is easy to serve resentfully, with sullenness or carelessness, feeling burdened by it all, making it a joyless, loveless, cheerless experience. But that is not how it should be. To be sure, there are times when burdens must be borne. There are occasions when we may struggle and strive. However, our desire should be that the Lord’s service is easy. Our expectation should be that his yoke is light. There is a pleasure in doing the will of God that nothing else supplies. There is joy and sweetness of communion with him in the work that we do for him.
The psalmist sets before us the one whom we serve, this God who is good, whose mercy is everlasting, and whose truth is to all generations. We are reminded why we are able to serve—it is because we are the sheep of his pasture. We are his people. He has made us that. We did not put ourselves in this relationship with God. We have been put in it according to grace, drawn near because of his matchless mercy toward us. To what end do we serve? We serve for his glory. We serve that his goodness might be known. We want to declare that greatness and that majesty and that excellence that belong to him. We have the best work to do. We serve by the help of his Spirit. We are upheld by the Spirit of God in the service that we render to the God who gives his Spirit. We are now a part of his kingdom, part of his family. We are servants of the Most High. We are priests and kings because of Jesus Christ. We are walking in the triumph of our great God and Savior. We truly know him, having been known by him. Our service, then, should not be careless but cheerful, not joyless but joyful—a service that enables us to smile even through tears and to press on even under burdens, as men and women who would take no other service were it offered to them.
Is that how we think about what we do for God? Yes, sometimes it may be difficult. At times, it can feel like an uphill struggle. It may feel like we are accomplishing little or nothing of what we have longed for, hoped for, and even prayed for. Nevertheless, it is because we serve our God that we can do so with gladness. It is this that helps to lighten those burdens, this that sustains us in the long and sometimes dark journey, and this that directs our eyes toward the reward that the Lord will give to all who have loved his appearing.
Let us not give the impression that serving the God of heaven is a heavy, worthless, and joyless task. Let us rather make a joyful shout to the Lord and serve him with gladness and so testify that he is the best of Masters, and we the most willing and eager of servants.