Series: From Pastor’s Desk
Number: Vol. 15, No. 4
Beloved: grace, mercy and love be yours without measure from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour. I am delighted to welcome you to the last week of this month, the month of May 2026. My prayer is that God will daily strengthen you to be fully committed to serving Him, so that other children of His can be encouraged to serve Him as well on account of you. Amen.
As we see in the bible, we can inspire the people of God around us to be devoted to serving Him through our faithfulness and endurance in doing His work. For instance, Paul, in his letter to the Philippians, speaks of how many people of God were encouraged to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ boldly through his devotion and endurance in preaching it, even to the point of being imprisoned because of it. (Cf. Phili 1:12-14)
So, if we are truly devoted to serving God, we may not be able to tell the degree to which it will encourage others around us to serve Him. I once heard of what a pastor did when he heard that another pastor single-handedly sponsored an evangelistic crusade. And what did he do? First, he took a huge sum of money and gave it to the pastor to appreciate him for sponsoring that crusade. Then he told him that he was giving him that money with a heart of prayer that God would enable him to also be able to do something similar someday.
Now did the pastor that sponsored the crusade know that what he did would inspire someone in that manner? No! He just did what he did because it was the will of God for him to do so. And by doing so, another person was encouraged to serve God more faithfully.But then, it is also possible for someone to see what another person is doing for God and be angry with the person or jealous of the person, instead of being encouraged to also serve God faithfully. As we see in the bible, the religious leaders of the Jews were jealous of Jesus because of what He was doing for the kingdom of God, instead of being inspired by His works to serve God faithfully themselves. So, they ended up killing Him. (Cf. Matt 27:18)
Also, we see that the Jews in a place called Pisidian Antioch were jealous of Paul and Barnabas when they saw what they were doing for the kingdom of God and how the gentiles were responding to it. Why were they jealous of them? They were jealous because even though they too had the word of God with them, they were not proclaiming it in truth to the gentiles. On the contrary, in most cases, they were simply treating those gentiles as unclean and undeserving of the grace of God.
But when Paul and Barnabas came to the place and began to do what they would not do and saw the impact their work was making on the gentiles, they became jealous and started insulting them and discrediting their message. Eventually, they drove them out of the place, when they realized that they could not stop the good work God was doing through them. (Cf. Acts 13:13-52)
What is this telling us? It is that if we will not devote ourselves to serving God or allow the good things others around us are doing for His kingdom to encourage us to serve Him well, anger and jealousy may take over our hearts. And where that is the case, instead for God to be able to use us as He is using others, Satan will be the one using us. Then we will find ourselves destroying the very work of God that we are supposed to be doing. And the kind of judgment this may bring on us may be unspeakable.S
o, if you don’t want jealousy to take over your heart and render you useless in God’s kingdom, be sure to devote yourself to serving Him in whatever way you can. And if you see others serving Him better than you are, be encouraged to learn from them so that you too can begin to do better in your service to Him. That way, you can be endowed with more grace from Him to increase in usefulness.
Have a splendid week.
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