Letting God choose where you serve

The way I see it, there are three types of people who serve in Christian ministries:

• Ministry professionals (who by calling serve, and are paid for their service)
  
• People who want to be in ministry but aren't (who serve in volunteer positions and give a large amount of time, while working full-time jobs to support themselves and/or their families)
  
• Volunteers who serve because they enjoy it (who don't feel any call to full-time ministry, but have a passion to serve)
  

Of course, I'm not counting those whose who serve out of guilt. More encouragement for you later.

If you count yourself in the last group, then you're in the majority. There's nothing wrong with loving your career and choosing to serve the Lord with the gifts he has given you as a volunteer.

Let me repeat: there is nothing wrong about that type of service!

Don't let emotion, guilt or peer pressure force you into decisions about service. God's call to you to serve will be clear and satisfying – but you may have a family, a career, a role that he clearly wants you in outside of ministry – and that is part of God's sovereign will for you as well.

An overlooked verse is 2 Corinthians 5:18-20 NLTse

18 And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him. 19 For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people's sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation. 20 So we are Christ's ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, "Come back to God!" 21 For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin,* so that we could be made right with God through Christ.

You are part of the church, the body of Christ. Everybody who believes in Christ is part of the body and fills a different role. No matter where or how we serve, the task is the same for all of us: ambassadors for God, appealing to those around us to be reconciled to God. How He chooses to do that through you should be up to Him, and not up to those around you.