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Our “work” this summer is
taking the good news of Jesus to those who have not heard. |
I love getting my hands dirty…shovel in hand, dirt under fingernails, the smell of sweat (ok, I’m a guy), the sense of accomplishment, and the feeling of exhaustion when your head hits the pillow at night. Our staff members love it too. Seriously, they are some of the hardest workers I know!
I sometimes get asked by students, “So, what kind of ‘work’ do you do on your mission trips”, which implies that we will be doing some kind of hard manual labor on the mission trip. There are plenty of mission trips that focus on hard physical work – you know, construction, painting, digging ditches, etc. And while some of our teams do a bit of physical labor, it is not the primary focus of our mission trips.
There is another “work” on our mission trips that we shed sweat, blood and tears over…. it is the “work” of believing in Jesus.
In John 6:28-29, a crowd approached Jesus and asked, “What must we do to do the works God requires?” Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”
Students who join Royal Servants this summer probably won’t dig any ditches, but they will dig deeper into God’s Word and “work” on their belief in Jesus Christ, growing deeper in their faith. This will happen as they engage in and answer challenging biblical questions, memorize Scripture, and connect with others in lively small group discussions. Then they take what they have learned and put it into action by reaching out and sharing what they believe with others. God uses them and stretches their faith muscles beyond anything they ever thought possible!
Students who are willing to do this kind of work—the work of believing— quickly find that this kind of labor is not hard physically, but it stretches them spiritually in a good way!
