As long as I come for worship service on Sunday, put into the offering bag 10% of my monthly salary to God each month, and serve in some ministry in church, I’ve done my part for God, haven’t I?” Yes, you have done well. But is that called serving God? What is the real meaning of serving God?

The above passage in Rom 6:11-13, tell us what is true service. True service requires you to “offer every part of yourself to Him.” Serving God does not only require you to set aside 9:30-10:45am every Sunday to attend worship service. If you are a Sunday School teacher, service for God does not only require you to set aside, say, Friday night 8pm-11pm to prepare your lesson. No. These are the acts of serving God. True service for God, regardless of whether you serve as an usher, a librarian, a Sunday School teacher, etc., involves your whole person. In other words, true service for God requires you to serve God with your whole being, namely, your heart and body. How does a Christian engage his entire person to serve God?

Let me give you an analogy. You eat a steamed fish and find it very delicious. Why is the taste so delicious? Is it because the fish is fresh. Yes, but you can’t eat a fish immediately caught out of the sea. Does the good taste come from the right amount of seasoning and other ingredients? Yes. The good taste is also a result of steaming the fish for just the right amount of time.   The most critical factor, however is the chef. For the fish to be tasty, the chef must conscientiously choose the best fish. He must have also worked hard for many years in honing his skills as a chef. This requires him to humbly learn, endure hardship as an apprentice, etc. A good fish is the product of the chef’s attitude to learning, his work as a chef, how he prepares the fish, and finally, how he cooks the fish. In other words, a tasty fish comes from the entire life of a chef, and not just that hour of cooking.

In a similar way, for your service to be acceptable to God, God wants requires your entire life to be involved. Your entire life must be holy, that is, you need to “offer every part of yourself to Him as an instrument of righteousness.” Your act of serving flows from your life that is inside you. If the way you think, talk or do things are filthy and unholy, your act, e.g., of collecting offering as an usher, will also be unclean. When you live a life that is sinful at work, in the way you relate to your family members, in the way you use your time, in your recreation, then when the time comes to serve God, your hands, legs, eyes, ears, and heart would have been stained with much spiritual dirt. Your 15 minutes of serving in church will also be stained with spiritual dirt. It will be obnoxious to God. But if you live a holy life daily, then even if you are limited in your ability, or what you do seems not too important to others, that little which you do is extremely valuable to God. You will receive praise and reward from God. Hence, make up your mind to serve God with your entire life that is holy in the new year 2015.