Do you find that there are times where God has called you to serve, but you haven't embraced it?
Aren't they the same thing? Not entirely.
It's easy, in the moment, or over time to accept God's calling to serve in a specific area (such as with youth or children or homeless or fill in the blank), but to embrace it means to live it. To dive in fully, and to be completely engaged in it. To fully surrender to serving in that area and to following the lead and call of God, even if the area of service isn't one that you entirely want to do, but it's one God wants you to fulfill.
It's not the obvious places of service that need embraced: it's the ones that are placed in our lives that we resist committing to. Our churches emphasize service overseas or on the mission field or to our communities, but in our lives there are areas of service we overlook, we ignore, we resist – until one day we realize that our calling is right under our noses.
We need to learn to recognize the opportunities to serve in our families, our homes, or places of business, our schools. The places where we spend the most time and with the people who surround us every day.
If we don't embrace those opportunities, why will God entrust us with bigger ones? Perhaps these are the big ones, and every other opportunity we are hoping and praying for are deceptions or intended to blind us to what's been placed before us. We're so easily distracted by the allure of "purpose" and "calling," that as we look beyond our current circumstances to where we think God is calling us to, that we fail to hear His voice where we are.
Serve well where you live, and other opportunities will follow. To embrace is to love, to love is to serve.
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