Luke 10:38-42
38 Now it happened as they went that He entered a certain village; and a certain woman named Martha welcomed Him into her house. 39 And she had a sister called Mary, who also sat at Jesus’ feet and heard His word. 40 But Martha was distracted with much serving, and she approached Him and said, “Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Therefore tell her to help me.”
41 And Jesus answered and said to her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things. 42 But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her.”
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I can’t remember when was the last time when I was just so excited about the things of God. Looking forward to every prayer meeting, every cell group meeting, every church service. All those things were the highlights of my week. Every touch from God, every new revelation, was precious.
And it was easy to be on fire for God, because everyone around me was the same. Some have gone on to become leaders. Well, that was precisely why I decided to stay in city harvest church in the first place. Because it was a great place to grow.
I don’t want to be so caught up in serving that the reason why I “need” to go to church is because I need to book seats, or I need to serve in my ministry, or because I need talk to people to make them feel welcomed in church. It gets very disturbing when people stop talking about how excited they are to hear the word from Pastor, or how amazing the presence of God was at service. Even more disturbing is it when people don’t talk about their walk with God or new revelations they have. Maybe it’s just me, but I seem to hear less of these things now.
In the past when I first came, it was a norm to go for an extra service on saturday, especially when there are guest speakers, or if pastor is going through a series. Maybe it’s because the preachers will share a different message each day. But people in the cell would just go for service together, and we’d be excited about it.
It’s a tendency to grow complacent as we are more familiar with things. But I feel we shouldn’t allow this. Like what Pastor said a few weeks back, there’s a risk we could end up doing what the Ephesian church did and lose our first love. It takes more than one person to ensure this doesn’t happen. Can we do it together?
This might sound controversial, but it’s just my view on things. I feel that people shouldn’t be allowed to serve excessively unless they walk close to God and are hungry for Him. The key word is excessively. How do you know you are serving excessively? When before service, you think about how many seats you are supposed to get later. All your mind focuses on during praise & worship is when people will come and fill the seats, how to hold the seats for your cell, how are you going to find people etc. That’s if you’re not serving in a ministry. If you’re serving in a ministry, then excessive is when you need to serve 6 weeks in a row and the week you’re not serving, you need to do recruitment (sounds familiar).
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to serve the people and build God’s house, because you love people. However if you don’t have a hunger for God and His presence, rhema, and fellowship, then there’s no point. How can you look forward to receiving from God, when your mind is everywhere else during service? I admit, someone has to do the seat booking and everything else that needs to be done. But it’s just the attitude, that the person doing it doesn’t forget that the reason why we go to church in the first place is to meet God.
If we’re hungry for God, we receive more from Him. And that is precisely what we need to serve others better. 
