Craig Clouston

 Saddle the Donkey

August 31

Abraham got up and saddled his donkey.

Genesis 22:3

Carl and Ruth were tired. Working tirelessly for twenty-six years, they had served on almost every board and committee in the church. Someone had told them early in their Christian walk, “God wants us to be spiritually exhausted at the end of each day!” They had taken it to heart, and many times they had sacrificed personal activities in an effort to be where they thought God expected them to be; they just wanted to please God.

Then one fall Sunday morning, on a rare vacation, they attended worship at a quaint little church in a picturesque little town in the South. The pastor brought a message regarding purposeful service. He explained that our reason for being is to serve the Lord.

Amen, thought Carl and Ruth.

Then he said something they’d never heard before. “When God calls us to service, it is to be His call, on His terms, for His purpose. We are not to serve for the sake of service. When God called Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, it was God’s call. Abraham did not awaken one morning and tell Sarah, ‘I think we should sacrifice Isaac. What do you think, Sarah?’ He would never have set out to do that on his own!” 

The pastor went on to say, “We set out to please God by doing things in His name. Many times those things are not what He would have us do.”

†

It is our reasonable sacrifice to serve God. He created us for service. But what we do is as important as why we do it.

How many times have we found ourselves serving God only to be completely frustrated and at wits’ end? If we were to ask, we might hear God say, “I appreciate your hard work, but that’s not what I wanted you to do.” Many times we begin an act of service, not instigated by God, asking Him to bless it, never connecting our frustration to the fact He wants us doing something else.

Our self-assigned sacrifice may look good, but we really should make sure God wants us to saddle the donkey.

Prayer

“Lord, please show me what You want me doing right now. In Jesus’ Name, amen.”